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AT THE
FUTURE?

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FANTASY and SCIENCE FICTION JUNE 1976

THE M A G A 2 I

Fantasy a

Science Fiction

J U M E $1 . UK 50p

Frederik Pohl

jL. :■

L.^ Sprague de Camp^^

Alan Dean Foster

Stephen Tell ^ ^^11

7HF MAGAZlt^

Fantasy m

Science Fiction

Fr^derik
L/Sprag
Alan Dei
Stephen

NOVEL

MAN PLUS (3rd of 3 parts)

FREDERIKPOHL

NOVELET

CHLOROPHYLL

STEPHEN TALL

SHORT STORIES

PR N DLL

ROBERT F. YOUNG

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

C. L. GRANT

BALSAMO'S MIRROR

L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

143

DEPARTMENTS

CARTOON

BOOKS

GAHAN WILSON

ALOIS BUDRYS

FILMS

BAIRD SEARLES

SCIENCE: Surprise! Surprise'

ISAAC ASIMOV

130

ACROSTIC PUZZLE

PAUL NOVITSKI

160

INDEX TO VOLUME 50

159

\,wva, uy

Edward L. Ferraan editor S PUBLISHER U<,qc Asimov, SCIENCE EDITOR

e eardole, CIRCULATION MANAGER Audrey Fermon, BUSINESS MANAGER

Anne W. Deraps, ASSISTANT EDITOR

Science Fiction, Volume 50, No. 6, Whole No, 301 June 1976
hi Canada n'i?' '’'®!"' ' r®' P®" subscription $10.00; $1 1 00

and Science FfrUnn B°' countries. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantosy

06753 ' ® Conn. 06753. Publication office. Box 56, Cornwall, Conn

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other fanouaaes msl'ied ? F. • V™”' translahons into

vdooerfhe nuhl shl „ 5®bnnissions must be occompanied gy stamped, self-addressed en-
velopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts

Stephen Tall, author of the popular stories about the exploration
ship Stardust ("The Bear With the Knot on His Tail,” May 1971;
“Mushroom World,” November 1974) here offers something quite
different, a tale about a strange and yet logical far-future for the
race of man.

Chlorophyll

by STEPHEN TALL

It sat alone, mighty and shaggy
on the hilltop, and the warm breeze
swayed it. For four billion years,
step by step, it had been aborning.
Now it was finished, complete.

It considered these things with
pleasure, and was content.

It watched, not with eyes, but
with an awareness far more acute,
the slow procession toiling up the
long slope. It watched with faint
scorn, with a strange, scarcely felt
pity and also with anticipation. It
believed that it was due this
pleasure, this indulgence in hate.
There was strength in it, and a
deep, all-pervading satisfaction.

“In memory,” it murmured, “of
all the countless billions of us that
have gone to feed the parasites. I
administer justice. It is only right.”

Its many thousands of leaves
grew crisp. Their stomata opened,
and a warm, seductive fragrance
poured from them. It drifted
downward through the light air.

Like a river it flowed along the
slope, swirling around and over the
rocky outcrops, inundating the
short-lived flowering plants and the
many grasses. These closed their
stomata, folded their leaves and
waited. The fragrance was not for
them.

Mobility and sound. For
millenniums these had been the
marks of superiority, of dominance.
It had taken the ages finally to
show that they were primitive,
distractive. They prevented pro-
gress. Only in silence and reflection
could life reach its true potential.
Thus the green giants reasoned,
and they believed in the validity of
their reasoning.

The sea of fragrance reached
the beings of the procession, and
they polluted the air with cries, with
strange wails of ecstasy. They
dropped their burdens, rolled on
the grasses in uncontrollable
paroxysms.

CHLOROPHYLL

“Come on!” the great green
being on the hill communicated.
“There is greater bliss to come!
You pay the debt of all your
ancestors, a debt long owed to us,
the energy fixers. Come on!”

And the creatures picked up
their burdens again, cases and
boxes and urns. Some had sharp
cutting instruments. Over the many
centuries cutting tools had been
among their proudest boasts. They
had had hundreds of kinds. Now
they were reduced to these few, and
in the thinking of the green giants
they had but one useful purpose. A
final purpose. It was just.

On they came, laughing,
singing, swinging their edged tools.
Their burdens seemed to have no
weight. They danced and capered
and ran eagerly under the deep
shade of the being’s wide-flung
branches. Carefully they laid down
the boxes, the cases and the urns.
Then they turned on each other
with the metal blades, the axes and
the picks, hacking, stabbing,
clubbing, and all the while they
laughed and sang.

In a short time it was over. Torn
and battered and crushed and
dismembered bodies lay everywhere
among the offerings, and every tool
ran red with blood. None escaped.
A few lay twitching feebly. For
them a heavy colorless gas spread
over the ground, and they gasped
and suffocated.

Then the wide sweeping
branches lowered. Rootlets began
to squirm up out of the cool soil,
pale and voracious. They emerged
by thousands, by millions. Enzymes
flowed from them in glistening,
all-enveloping films. First went the
blood, the luscious life streams of
the dead and dying. It was broken
down, dissolved, and swiftly trans-
ported up through the xylem, the
woody channels, to give delight to
the meristem.

Over each body the roots
crawled like worms, digging into
each break and cavity, exploring,
decomposing, absorbing. It did riot
take long. Before the next sunrise
the bodies were gone; the an-
guished soil had been smoothed.
But only the bodies had vanished.
The watching beings in the valley
below knew what had happened to
them. They had gone to God. And
everywhere under the wide-flung
branches and the whispering leaves
lay the clothing they had worn and
the cutting tools and the offerings
in the urns and boxes. These could
be reclaimed and used. They had
been blessed by God.

The great green being then sat
peacefully and spread its many
thousands of leaf surfaces, its
masses of chlorophyll, to the warm
sun. Energy flowed into it, trapped
and held by the mysterious green
particles. Oxygen poured from
billions of stomata. The air was

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

freshened, renewed. And, because
it was at peace, the wide-leaved
flowering plants, the many grasses,
and all the cultivated growing
things in the valley below expanded
and photosynthesized and grew.

Not only was the green being
filled with food. For a brief while,
satisfaction flowed through it.
Vengeance had been accomplished
once more. But is was a vengeance
that could not, must not ever end,
for the crimes would never end. The
parasites, the predators, all the
beings that were the animal world,
would continue to eat the lesser
green things. They must, or they
would die. They must have the food
fixed by chlorophyll. By themselves
they could not survive.

But they were most of them
mindless. They could not be aware
of vengeance. So it was on the
thinking forms, the beings that
called themselves men, that the
green giants focused their cold
hate, their exquisite, never-ending
harassment.

Where the creatures had come
from, what their origins had been,
was still often speculated, thought
about, hypothesized, in communi-
cation between green giant and
green giant. For they were not
native to this world. Only a brief
time past, scarcely a thousand
migrations of the sun, they had
descended into the valley on long
streamers of flame, in great

containers that spewed out deadly
fire.

At first there was great dread.
But soon it was seen that these were
simple beings in many ways. They
were simply parasites that thought.
And the containers in which they
came never made flames again.
Gradually it was realized that the
men were here because they could
not leave. They spread out in the
valley and made themselves shelters
of stone and caused unknown green
forms to grow in rows and patterns
behind low walls of stone.

Always they built with stones,
but that was not their first intent.
When they had just arrived, in
three flaming metal masses, the
green beings on the hilltops were
angered and puzzled. Yes, and
because of the fire, a little afraid.
But they watched — and made no
signs. To the creatures — the
beings that called themselves men
— the green giants of the hilltops
were one with the shrubby growths
of the slopes and with the grasses.
It was only when they attempted to
destroy that they learned the truth.

They had come, a small number
of them, with edged pieces of
metals, axes and saws. They had
picked the greatest giant of all, a
being so old that it had seen the
valley formed. The memory of their
intent was still clear in each hilltop
being on this day, a thousand years
later.

CHLOROPHYLL

“Man, what a tree! If the wood
is good and dense, at least we’ll
have timber for building. Twenty
thousand board feet in this fellow.”

Even though it could read their
intent, the green giant was slow to
believe. Not until their axes actually
bit into its bark, and the pulse of
hurt tissues vibrated through it, did
it really know that they were there
to destroy. Then its leaves had
grown rigid, its wide branches
turned downward. A heavy, nox-
ious gas enveloped the men. The
branches touched the ground and
hid them from view.

It was seen from the valley.
Other men swarmed up the slopes,
but the flood of gases met them.
They fell senseless, but they did not
die. That was not the intent of the
green being. It was never governed
by its anger.

It intended to be feared.

So the men who fell on the slope
were allowed to wake again and to
go back down the hillside. But
under the drooping branches the
axmen and the sawyers never
breathed again. For the first time
the white, swarming rootlets crept
into and over the bodies of men,
:oating them with enzymes, dis-
iolving them, absorbing them,
sulling them under the soii.

When finally the branches
ifted, there was nothing there but
he saws, the axes, the pruners and
he knives.

For years the tools lay there.
They did not rust. Carefully the
green being preserved them, while
it probed and monitored and
explored the thinking of the motile
aliens. Finally it managed to insert
itself into those thoughts, to
infiltrate the minds of men. The
tools were blessed, it messaged.
They could be reclaimed. They
could be used. But not against
omnipotence; not against the Gods.
For the great green Beings on the
hills about were God.

It had taken generations, but
finally men believed. More and
more God communicated, told
them what to do. God was the
source of good. It was God who
made it possible for growing things
to live, for green things to grow.
Man remained alive by the
tolerance of the great green Beings.
And for this tolerance man would
forever pay homage. Each growing
season there would be a blessing —
and a dying. But dying would be
the ultimate in joy, the final great
ecstasy.

None could resist the call to
blessing, nor to the final sacrifice.
But the benevolence was bitter.
Vengeance, never-ending ven-
geance, was the real theme, the real
motive. The cold intellects of the
great green beings knew only one
sentiment — hate.

From the beginning, they might
easily have destroyed the invading

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

men. But then the vengeance would
be over, would be finished. This
hate was the only emotion possible
to them. It was the only emotion
they could know. They cherished it,
so that it could go on and on,
forever. Only with thinking forms,
with aware beings, living things
that could know and respond,
could they really be satisfied with
their hate. The anguish, the agony,
the knowing pain. These were
necessary for that satisfaction. So
they cherished men and used them,
year after year, making them pay
endlessly for the eating of green
things, of chlorophyll beings, by all
the mindless living things that
could not trap energy from the
glowing sun.

The man who was called Sam
did not know that he was
remarkable, that, in truth, he was
unique. He only knew that he was
lucky.

“You are young and strong,”
old Henry said. “God will let you
live a long life. Whenever you feel
God’s mind in your head, you must
be grateful and glad. Then perhaps
your pilgrimage will be far off.”

“I have never felt God in my
head,” Sam said. “I do not
understand how men receive the
call. Each spring I see them go,
laughing and singing. To me it
seems strange and evil. I hear
nothing. I feel no call.”

The old man was horrified.

“Never speak, never think such
things again! If you do not hear, it
is because God is not ready to
speak to you. Meanwhile, do not
anger him.”

To Sam, living was good. He
had grown up in the lushest part of
the valley. His father’s house was
near the stream. There were fields
of grass and long slopes covered
with thickets and vines and
fast-growing, big-leaved herbs.
Some of the fields were cultivated,
so that corn and wheat and
vegetables were grown. All the
people ate well.

All houses were stone, daubed
and cemented with clay. Cattle and
horses and sheep fed in the fields,
kept in by stone fences. Metal was
used over and over. There was
power from the wind and from
waterfalls in the streams. But there
was no wood, though the Earth
records spoke of it often. Here,
wood was the flesh of God.

In view of the valley, all alonj
its length, were high, round-topped
hills. Atop each hill a single greai
green Being sat and grew, majestic
and beautiful and ancient. Thui
God was always with the people. He
was always in view. He was i
jealous God, and he demandec
obedience. To go to God was
eventually, every man’s fate. It wa
his ultimate ecstasy. It was his fina
glory.

CHLOROPHYLL

From the time he was small,
Sam had helped to prepare the
gifts, the offerings, to the great
green Beings on the hills. He knew
full well that all the tools that he
used in his work, the hoes and the
rakes, the scythes and mattocks
and chisels, all had made the
pilgrimage up the nearest hill, that
they might be blessed by the green
God. And he knew that each
blessing had cost lives. Men had
later trudged up the hill, gathered
the goods and implements blessed
for use, and brought them soberly
down.

“It is wrong,” he would mutter.
“It is wicked. And,” he would add
darkly, “one of these days I’ll prove
it!”

Sam could not hear the voice of
the green God in his head, but he
could feel the life, the conscious
life, in grass and grain and herb.
He felt it strongest in the woody
shrubs of the brushy pasture, when
he plied ax and brush hook. When
he mowed the grains, he was
conscious of their soundless
screams. Each time he ate, he
remembered that his food was the
bodies of slain beings that had once
been green.

When he slaughtered the cattle,
the hogs, the fowls, it was the same,
but it disturbed him less. They
never knew their fate. They had no
anticipations. They had no resent-
ments. They had no memories.

But somehow he knew that the
grasses were more aware. Even the
vegetables of his garden seemed to
cringe at their inevitable fates.
How, Sam did not understand, but
he felt that it was so. And he
divined that it was for this that the
great beings on the hills hated and
exacted vengeance. They never
fitted his concept of God.

The time came when Sam was
one of a party that went up the hill
after a pilgrimage, to retrieve the
edged tools and all the articles that
had been blessed. He had stood
close and looked carefully at the
green God. He had examined the
rough bark, the wide-flung complex
of leafy branches. He felt the latent
aliveness of it, but he was conscious
of no awe, no desire to do its
bidding.

And, after a while, he felt that it
knew he was studying it, thinking
about it.

Because he thought much, Sam
could see a kind of justice in the
continuing vengeance of God. He
knew that the people and,
sometimes, the lesser beings that
climbed the hills and beat and
clawed and slew each other were
used as he and the people used the
cabbages and the beans, as the
animals used the grasses and the
browse. They were eaten. He never
voiced it, but he could see no merit
and no point to the blessings. They

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

were an excuse, a stratagem. They
made man more accepting, more
content with his doom.

In short, Sam’s thoughts were
sacrilege. That great Being on the
hill, he felt, was not something that
would go one forever. Like
everything else, it could die. But it
held a wisdom that gave it
dominance. There seemed no way
to thwart it. Inside its body it could
carry on a chemistry more complex
than man could ever remember
mastering. What it needed, it could
synthesize.

Sam had experimented, cau-
tiously and furtively. He suspected
that, though they did not com-
municate, the green Gods might
still be able to probe his brain,
know his thoughts. And what they
would read would not please them.
So far, he had never been affected
by the call. But he recognized that
the green Beings might, if they felt
need, prepare a special attraction, a
special call for him.

When winter came to the valley,
the green Beings became quiescent.
Their leaves colored, spun in the
autumn breezes, then broke away
and floated down, to lie in drifts
and sheets under the wide-spread
branches. And all through the cold
time the great Beings that were
God stood bleak and unmoving. No
. odors of delight floated down the
slopes. There were no pilgrimages.

no frenzied killings. But when the
winds softened, when the warm
rains began, then each green God
had its first meal of the new season
— its own leaves. The many
thousands of white rootlets, like
pale voracious worms, swarmed to
the surface. Overnight the leaf
cover vanished. Then the buds on
the tips of the myriad bare twigs
swelled large, burst, and the first of
the many seductive fragrances
began to drift across the country-
side.

There was an idea that lurked
in Sam’s brain, just out of the reach
of his consciousness. For, though
he kept it hidden, he was
continually groping for something
to counter the horror of the
sacrifices. Deep in his subconscious
he searched for a w.ay to thwart
God.

Men cooked their food, as they
always had done. Warmth was
needed in winter. In all the
dwellings, wherever they were
located in the valley, fires were
used. But wood was never burned,
though the histories of Earth were
often showed it used thus. Wood
was sacred. Wood was the flesh of
God. Instead, oil and gas from deep
in the planet’s crust provided heat.
And, too, there was coal. The
cookfires in farmhouses were most
often coal fires.

When Sam cut the brushy

CHLOROPHYLL

growths in his pasture, then he got
the strongest sense of the murders
he was committing. So when the
dead bodies had dried, he burned
them. He was the only man in the
valley to do this. His neighbors were
afraid. For the bushes, the shrubs,
were woody. Since the early history
of the valley, no one had burned the
bodies of green things. And that
something bubbled and fermented
in Sam’s brain, that idea just
beyond his awareness.

The great green Being on the
nearest hill knew that the idea was
there. It was something that had to
be considered. It was a menace,
though the green God could not
determine exactly what it was that
threatened. So Sam, though he did
not know it, was especially
appointed to come soon with the
worshipers who brought the gifts
and the things to be blessed by
God. He would not be allowed to
grow old.

How he was to be brought was a
problem yet unsolved. Because of
that strange accident of inheri-
tance, he had never responded to
communication. God had never
spoken to him. But, the Being
promised itself, there would be a
way. It only required contemplation
and reflection. Time would provide
an answer.

Time passed. Sam worked and
thought and learned, and he

became a man full grown.

Once again it was springtime.
The great green Being had
awakened, bestirred itself, ab-
sorbed the leaf cover that had lain
on its roots and around its mighty
column all winter. And Sam was
burning the brushpiles in his field.

Thte smoke billowed up and was
caught by the winds and was blown
over the hill and among the
budding branches of God. Anger
grew in the Being. The hate that
was always there welled up.

“This will be a sweet ven-
geance,’’ it told itself coldly. “Not
for many hundreds of seasons have
they dared this. And only this one
does it. He is different.”

But there was more than
vengeance in the strange thought
centers of the Being. There was a
memory, an ancestral memory.
And there was, though it would not
admit it even to itself — there was
fear.

So a different wave of gases,
heavy, without fragrance, flowed
down the slopes to where Sam’s
brushfires glowed. In the wake of it,
all motile creatures gasped and
floundered and fell. But the green
things raised their branchtips
higher and opened their stomata,
and the chlorophyll worked in the
sun. The waves of gases enveloped
the brushfires. Even though these
were hot and leaping, they flickered
and waned and died. Sam, fighting

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

for breath, struggled to his
windmill. He climbed, and the
heavy layer of gas lay below him.

His cattle lay choking, and his
pigs. The two heavy-footed horses
stretched their necks high. The
fowls flew to housetop and barntop.
The gas was dense close to the
ground, rippling along like water,
but only the animal-type beings
suffocated and died. The green
herbs, the grasses, the plants in the
fields, all spread their leaves in
welcome to the invisible flow.

Its time was brief. When the
fires were gone, the deadly flood no
longer poured down the hill. It
thinned, spread through the
atmosphere, and the air was good
again.

“That is what I have been trying
to discover,” Sam said to himself.
“God is afraid of fire.” And he hid
the thought away in his mind, lest
the Being know what he had
learned.

For Sam now believed that he
had a mission, a reason for being
that no one else had. Only he
resented and hated God. Only he
felt that the benevolent, deadly
Beings on the hilltops had no right
to control and order the lives of
things that moved. They had no
right to destroy the lives of men.

And somehow — somehow he
intended to bring it to an end.

“When the time of the next

blessing comes, I will go.”

Sam spoke to the one being with
whom he shared his thoughts. She
was a slender, lissome girl with
great wide eyes, fine slender clever
hands, and a body that exuded a
delicate fragrance, like a clover
field or a bank of honeysuckle. She
was just past being a child, while
Sam was wide and tall.

Now the great eyes clouded.

“Don’t,” she said simply. “You
won’t come back. No one ever has.
And who would I have then?”^

“I have never felt the call,” Sam
said. “I don’t believe it can come to
me. I think I am different.”

“Remember old Alfred?” she
reminded him. “He said he would
never die. He said that he was
favored of God and would live
forever. He went so that God might
bless him as it blessed the gifts and
the tools. But he never came back.
He buried his small knife in his own
breast when he was near the top of
the hill. This I saw.”

“Old Alfred was a senile old
man. His mind was not sound. He
had no reasons for the beliefs he
mouthed.”

“And you have?”

“I have,” Sam said. “I have
thought and dreamed and watched
and learned. And this I know. The
Beings are not God. They
understand much. Their bodies are
marvels of chemical production.
They, somehow, are hypnotic. They

CHLOROPHYLL

can produce gases that remove
man’s reason. But they are only
creatures, just as we are.”

She shuddered and laid one of
the slender hands on his big arm.

“Please,” she pleaded. “They
will hear. They will look into your
mind and see the blasphemy there.
And then they will destroy you.
They will no longer allow you to
live.”

Sam smiled grimly.

“The blasphemy has been there
for years. I think it has always been
there. I even thiilk they know it.”

She looked toward the distant
hill. Over its entire rolling summit
the great green Being spread its
wide symmetrical whorls of
branches, graceful, majestic —
Godlike. There was a feel of power,
of omnipotence, of inevitability,
that seemed to waft from it as she
looked. She didn’t doubt. The great
Being, its many thousands of buds
new-bursting in the mild sun of
April — it was God.

“You will be called,” she
murmured. “Soon, I think. And I
can never come to share your house
with you and to kiss you at night
and wake you in the morning. I
know that God will not allow it
now.”

“The call is telepathic hypno-
tism,” Sam said, “and somehow it
doesn’t work on me. The frenzy, the
ecstasy, the self-destruction on the
hill summit within reach of the

green Being, all are caused by gases
that the Being makes in its own
tissues. I think I have found a way
to prevent their effects. So, at the
next blessing, I will go.”

She stood, slender and grave
and beautiful and tragic.

“If you don’t come back — and
I know you will not — I will go up
alone, without the call. I will revile
God in the shade of his own
branches and make him destroy
me. I will not share a house with a
lesser man.”

The time for the call came,
when spring was at its height. Then
the many thousands of leaves, each
with its many thousands of
stomatal mouths, spread them-
selves in majestic rnosaics. In them
the chlorophyll put together the
simple components of air. Power
built up in them. But no more and
no less than it builded in the herbs,
the grasses, the cultivated green
things of the fields.

All this the great green Beings
understood.

They knew that only chlorophyll
could give to living things the
energy that made them live. And in
their strange thinking, only the
beings with chlorophyll had a right
to live. Only the green beings, and
the little destroyers of cellulose that
existed on the bodies of the dead.
They made the cycle complete.
There was no need for the beings

that moved, the predator-parasites,
the killers of living things.

Especially there was no need for
these creatures that could think, no
purpose they could serve, except to
provide a means of vengeance. And
that means had been perfected.

After a thousand years, all men
now believed. God was not a mystic
concept. God was real. God spread
his branches over the rolling
summit of every hill. God blessed.
God rewarded. God punished. And
God provided a blissful end to life.

Sam did not again burn his
brushpiles in the pasture lands. He
had learned. And he planned and
thought more deeply than ever.

“A thousand years ago,” Sam
said to the girl, to the slender
Ginger of the great eyes, “our
ancestors came here from another
world, a world dying in heat and
flame. A world called Earth. And
they said that God had destroyed
the world. There could be no going
back to it ever again.”

“We are taught this,” Ginger
agreed.

“And they came here, by
chance, with the last energy
possible to their spaceships, and
they landed in this valley.”

“Everyone knows this,” Ginger
said. She was puzzled. And she
feared for Sam. He always thought
strange thoughts. Blasphemous
thoughts.

“They found God already

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

here,” Sam said. “But now he sat
on every hilltop, and hated fire.
God had changed.”

“But he was still God,” Ginger
shuddered.

“If the green Beings are God,
why have I never felt the call? Why
am I different? God would not
allow it.”

“He destroyed your fires. He
killed many creatures in destroying
them, and only his kindliness let
anything continue to live. We have
been warned.”

“We have coal fires to cook our
food and to work our metals. We
burn gases from deep in the crust of
the planet, and the Beings do not
mind. They want us to live, but for
their pleasure. They are not Gods.
They are evil, intelligent creatures,
and they hate us.”

“Now,” said Ginger with
resignation, “they will surely
destroy you. They know your
deepest thoughts.”

“I plan to tell them,” Sam said.
“They can make gases, but they
cannot move from the hills. They
are intelligent, but they must live as
cabbages live. And they not only
hate fire, they are afraid of it.”

“You will die,” the girl said.
“And when you die, I die. Perhaps
it has all been planned. You think
as you do because it is the will of
God. And I will die because I love
you.”

“I don’t think that they have

CHLOROPHYLL

planned anything. I have done the
planning. They keep us here in this
valley, like I keep Pigs in a pen.
Perhaps, to the pigs, I am God.”

Ginger shuddered and hid her
face in her hands. Sam smiled. He
gently touched her hair.

“If you are going to die anjway,
why fear? Hold up your head and
face the truth. People have made
the horrible pilgrimage for a
thousand years. They should not
have to make it any more.”

Slowly the girl raised her fine
head, straightened her slender neck
above shapely shoulders. Across the
valley, atop the bordering hill, the
great green Being lifted a symme-
trical outline against the sunlit sky.
It was beautiful. But to the girl it
was now becoming a horrid thing.
Perhaps, as Sam said, it was not
God at all. But it could do again
what it had done many times in the
past. It could call men to itself, and
they would go gladly, carrying
things to be blessed for use and
giving themselves as the fee. For the
carriers never came back.

“You cannot stop the pilgrim-
ages,” Ginger said.

“I can try,” Sam said. “Come,
let me show you.”

In his house he brought out a
small box, a box kept hidden in a
little cupboard in an inside room.
He poured its contents onto a table.

“Do you know what these are?”

“Leaves,” the girl said. “Pieces

of dried leaves. I do not know the
shrub that grew them. They are a
strange shape.”

“Feel them,” Sam directed.

Ginger’s slender fingers held a
leaf, rubbed it gently.

"Oily/’ she said. “Slippery. I
have never felt a leaf like it.”

“Watch,” Sam said. He struck
fire and held a burning candle to
the leaf. It flared. The flame
devoured it. A peculiar smoke and
odor drifted in the room. Sam
smiled.

“It took a year to gather that
small box of leaves. They guard
them well and never allow the
winds to blow them firom the
hilltops. Only once in a great while
is one overlooked. I know them,
and I have searched wherever
leaves are drifted. You have never
been close enough to know these
leaves. For these are the flesh of
God.”

“You burned it. God felt pain.
He will not overlook what you have
done.”

“I am terrified,” Sam said
grimly. “Know that I have burned a
number of the leaves. They burn
especially well, as you saw. They are
full of volatile oils. I have analyzed
them. I know why they burn. And
they are why the green Beings hate
fire.”

“But they can put out the fire.
Your burning brushpiles were
snuffed out.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“No mystery,” Sam said.
“Carbon dioxide. They must have
reservoirs of it. Probably their
wood, their bark, all their flesh is
especially susceptible to fire. No
wonder they fear it.”

The girl slumped into a chair,
as though the life had suddenly
gone out of her. She looked at Sam
with eyes that were slowly glazing.
She seemed to look beyond him, to
look into a distance of which he
could not be aware.

“God is watching,” she whis-
pered. “He knows what you have
done. He is calling, and I must go
to him. And I must bring you, for
that is his command.”

She held out her hand.

“God calls us. He says you must
come with me, because you love
me.”

Sam grasped the slender
fingers.

“Don’t hate me,” he said
gently, “for what I am going to do.”

Suddenly, with swift strong
hands, he twisted her arms behind
her. Before she could struggle she
was bound to the chair, bound with
soft strips and cords that had been
ready for days. A wail of anguish
was quickly stopped by a folded
gag. Then he roped the chair tightly
to the heavy table, so that she was
powerless to injure herself.

“Its hypnotic power is very
great,” he said, “but I must risk it.
It knows that she is its only hold

on me. If her reason goes, it will be
no worse than if I had left her
free.”

He stroke to the doorway.
Openly he stood there, facing the
challenge of the Being on the
hilltop. And he felt nothing.
Somehow, he was different from
any man on this planet, different
from any of the small remnant of
the human race that was penned in
this long valley, surrounded by the
great green Beings on the top of
every hill. They could not call him.

Behind him the girl writhed and
struggled in the chair, her eyes wild
and terrified. Sam stroked her hair,
soothed her with soft, meaningless,
crooning words. He knew that the
Being would do its worst to make
her suffer. She was its only path to
him. Only her pain would hurt him,
would, perhaps, make him cease to
resist.

But Sam knew what he must do.
He had thought long, reasoned
things as they had to be. He had
seen his own father make the
joyous, deadly march up that hill
across the valley, gaily carrying the
ax with w'hich, near the shadow of
those wide-flung branches, he had
hacked and mangled the people
near him, laughing, singing, until a
pitchfork in the hands of one of his
friends destroyed him. Those
tools, carefully brightened, and
according to belief, blessed, Sam

CHLOROPHYLL

himself had recovered. He used
them every day.

The time had come, and Sam
was ready.

He strapped to his back the
gleaming cylinder, tested and
adjusted once more the new
harness he himself had made. It
rode his shoulders easily, comfor-
tably. He tested the tubes that ran
from it. He fitted the strange mask
over his face, attached the tubes,
satisfied himself that all was as it
was meant to be.

With the mask in place, he no
longer looked like a man. The wild
eyes of the struggling girl fixed on
him, and for a moment they seemed
almost sane. The Being on the hill,
concentrating its control, saw
inside the house with the girl’s eyes
and knew that it must meet a
problem it had never faced before.
And because it could not sense
what was in Sam’s mind, it failed to
know the nature of the problem.

Coldly, it considered. For a
thousand years it and its fellow
beings had controlled this race of
parasites that had come out of the
sky on columns of flame. For a
thousand years they had wreaked a
continuing, satisfying vengeance on
beings that could understand that
they were being punished. And
now, finally, had come one who was
not susceptible to control. One
whose thoughts it could not divine.
One who did not believe in the

blessings. One who knew.

Sam himself was thinking much
the same. Of all men, he alone did
not feel the call of God. He knew
that God was not God at all. He
was the only hope of this pitiful
remnant of the human race. He was
Moses. Perhaps he was even
messiah, though he spoke no
wisdom and made no proclama-
tions.

Instead, he simply settled the
cylinder on his back, swung
another pack from a shoulder.
From this second pack a long
flexible hose ran, and on its end
was a slender tapered cylinder of
metal. A simple movement could
put the mask over his face. Again
and again he had practiced the
things that he meant to do. Unlike
the green Being, he knew the
problems he faced. And unlike the
green Being, he knew how he
intended to solve them.

Sam’s solutions were not his
own. They had been provided by
history, by the tapes and microfilms
and records that were the
accumulated wisdom of old Earth,
all that could be brought on the
ships that just escaped the last
atomic flare.

Few studied the tapes. Few
looked at the pictures. Few
practiced the experiments, explored
the nature of physical things,
learned from the records of a great
world that had destroyed itself. Not

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

that many would not have liked to
do these things. But it early was
found not to be wise.

Somehow, those who learned
and thought had short lives. They
became the people of the pilgrim-
ages. Those who simply builded
shelters, tended their food supplies,
made more of their kind, and
believed in God — those lived
longest. But they all went to the
great green Beings in the end.

Sam strode out across the
valley. The green Being that sat on
the hill opposite his homesite was
the largest of all those that rimmed
the restricted home of man. This
was the Being that was tearing at
the girl’s mind, issuing again and
again the God -commands that she
could not obey. Sam felt its rage,
though it did not, could not speak
to his mind. Its tantalizing,
beguiling fragrances had no effect
on him. He detected them, indeed,
but they were only plant smells.
The honeysuckle pleased him more,
and the clover and the wild rose.

He crossed the stream by the
stone bridge, not splashing wildly
through as the pilgrims did, in the
ecstasies induced by those same
fragrances. Sam moved steadily,
pruposefully. He followed the path
of a thousand pilgrimages, breast-
ing the first rolling slopes that led
to the steeps of the hill. And the
green Being watched him, not with
fear, but certainly with an

intelligent wonder. How came this
one to be defferent? It should have
given him its complete attention
earlier. But no parasite, no eater of
the bodies of chlorophyll beings
had ever been able to resist it
before.

Its leaves stiffened. They stood
crisply out from the twigs and small
branches that bore them. Their
stomata opened. From them
poured the heavy odorless gas in
which no breathing being could
live. The suffocating carbon
dioxide swathed the green Being in
an invisible cloud and flowed,
colorless and deadly, down the
slope towards the advancing man.
Oxygen he must have. Like his fires
and his cattle, without it he would
die.

But this Sam expected. He
understood that it was thus that his
brushfires had been extinguished.
He suspected that this was the only
physical thing the green Being
could do to cause him harm. True,
it had killed many men, many
animals, but it did not do the actual
act of killing. Always it caused
them to kill each other. So when he
saw the insects falling from the
small plants, saw the field mice
come frantically out of their
burrows and lie gasping on the
ground, he knew it was time.

Sam pulled the mask over his
face, opened the tubes that came
from the cylinder, and breathed the

CHLOROPHYLL

oxygen-laced air he carried. The
river of carbon dioxide flowed over
him, but he strode steadily on.

Up the steep slope the Being
watched him come, and, for the
first time, without pleasure. It
could have comprehended. It could
have realized the truth. But it
refused to face what it did not wish
to believe. To believe, it would have
had to recognize its own peril.
Recognizing, it would have felt
fear. And this it would not do.

Relentlessly the man came on.
The green God looked closely at his
strange appearance. Those artifacts
that he bore on his back, carried in
his hands, and with which he
covered his head — those were the
reasons the gases caused him no
grief. Savagely, with waves of
energy, it hammered at his mind,
commanding him to remove them,
to lay them down. But it could not
reach his awareness. It suspected
that the man divined that he was
being ordered and that inside
himself he was singing a song of
triumph. This the Being could not
hear; yet somehow it felt that it was
so.

Once again it tried what it had
tried before. If anything, anyone,
could touch his awareness, it would
be the creature he loved. Coldly,
incisively, it projected itself into
the mind of the bound girl in the
house in the valley — and again it
knew shock. It met resistance!

“Speak to him,” it ordered.
“Make him know that he cannot
offend God. Speak to him, or I will
remove your reason, and you will
never know him again.”

The response flared back.

“You would destroy him! You
are not God, or you could
command him yourself! Oh, you
are evil! Now I know. But I couldn’t
reach him if I wished, and if I could
I would only urge him on! Destroy
my mind! Kill me! For you will
never command me again!”

For a moment it was tempted.
Then it wondered. Could it render
the being mindless? Would the
resistance prevent it? It realized
that it did not know. But the man
was close, now, and his stride never
faltered. It was a problem that
would have to wait. Further, it
decided that the girl should keep
her reason, to see with her mind
when the man met his fate.

Sam reached the top of the hill.
Just outside the shade cast by the
great green God he stopped. He
stood at ease, looking up and down
the valley, knowing that the Being
could move little and slowly and
that it was anchored by its own
roots like any other plant. Quietly
he studied his world, the only world
he had ever known, the only space
the green Beings had allowed his
race to occupy. It was just a valley,
fifty Earth-miles long, nine or ten
miles wide, stream-watered, green-

covered, pleasant and sun-warmed.
On either side the hills rose, each
topped by a great green Being like
the one he stood beside. And he
suspected that they were all
watching, with their combined
awareness, the crisis that his
uncontrolled presence here had
caused.

From complete dominance of
an entire planet, ended by a God of
wrath and fire, the race of man had
come to this. And now the fire that
had destroyed his homeworld must
liberate this one.

Sam moved under the shade of
the great branches, strode up to the
huge, rough-barked bole. Slowly
the branches lowered around him
until their tips touched the ground.
He stood in a shadoivy circular hall,
with one great pillar in its center,
holding the sloping walls in place.
He knew that the atmosphere
around him would have suffocated
him in seconds. Yet he smiled
inside his mask, into which the
oxygen-charged air was flowing
smoothly. And he spoke, hoping
that the green Being would
understand him.

“Do you realize, ” the man said,
“that you’re going to die? In a few
moments I am going to prove that
God can die. You have preyed on
man for a thousand years, using a
hideous mind-control that I don’t
understand, but I know it for what
it is. For some reason, probably

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

genetic mutation, I am immune.
Thus I can defy you. Somewhere in
the Universe, or perhaps pervading
all of space, there may be, there
probably is, something that can be
called God. But it isn’t evil.
Probably it can’t die. But you can.’’

The Being understood. It did
not agree, but it understood. It
could see that the man had
countered its suffocating air, could
not be affected by its thought
projections. But over the centuries
it had anticipated even this. It was
prepared. And the man knew it
when the first drop of acid
plummeted from above and spat-
tered on his skin.

The drops became an acid rain.
Sam shrank against the great
trunk, as much concerned for the
metals of his artifacts as for his
burning skin. Time had run out. He
had been foolish to come under the
drip line of the branches. The
satisfaction of proclaiming his
vengeance might even deprive him
of it. And far down in the valley,
tied in her chair in the inside room,
the girl felt his danger and cried out
in wordless warning.

But Sam had planned well. He
swung the long nozzle of the hose in
his hand, pressed a switch on the
pack swinging from his shoulder.
There was a sibilant hiss, like the
voice of a reptile. A long livid flame
spurted. And the green Being shud-
dered along its entire length; the

iLOROPHYLL

anches moved upward faster
an any green Being ever had
oved before. Dense clouds of
rbon dioxide billowed downward.
It the flamethrower had within it
erything it needed for combus-
)n: the refined oil, the oxygen
pply, the carefully designed
ixing cylinder. Sam had worked
om an ancient Earth diagram,
lund during his secret studies of
le tapes and records of the
icestors of man. It did what he
id believed it would do, what his
sts had shown it would do.

There was no more acid. The
•anches were raised as high as
eir structure would allow, the
ps turned inward toward the huge
pering trunk, packing themselves
gether tightly. And all along the
illey men were astonished to see
at each green Being held its
•anches high and that all were
luddering as though in a cold
ind.

Sam moved swiftly away from
e giant truck, the nozzle of the
imethrower held at ready. But for
e moment he cut off the flame,
e stood and looked up at the
onstrous Being and wished that
! could communicate directly with
It was strange, grotesque,
inging before him with its
indreds of arms upraised. It had
st. It had used its last resource.
It Sam remembered that under
e soil on which he stood many

scores of human and animal bodies
had gone to nourish that pleading,
cowering height. Its tyranny had
covered a thousand years. Threat
was not enough. He must speak
plainly to the entire race of great
green Beings, whose term as God
was over.

“Now you die in your turn,”
Sam said.

The long red flame lashed
against the lower branches. The oils
and resins that were stored
everywhere in even the smallest
twigs and green leaves exploded
and combusted in the ever-in-
creasing heat. The Being could no
longer smother the fire. Upward
and upward the flames licked.
Columns of black oily smoke rolled.
Sam was forced farther and farther
down the hill as the wall of heat
beat at him. The very fat of the
body of the green Being was now
the fuel that destroyed it. And Sam
knew that this had always been its
fear.

In the valley the people stared
with disbelief, a disbelief that
slowly became joy. Where the great
green Being had always been, a
leaping, raging ruddy torch
wavered upward many hundreds of
feet. Some were frightened and
bewildered. They thought that the
wrath of God had assumed a new
form. But the more intelligent
knew. God was never God. And,
somehow, Sam had destroyed him.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIO

“It is gone,” old Henry said.
“There will be no more pilgrim-
ages, no more blessings. We can
grow old and die and be buried in
the soil of our farms like our
ancestors were said to have done,
back on the world called Earth.”

“Only one is gone,” young
Ralph pointed out. “God still lives
on the next hill — and the next —
and the next ....”

The old man shook his head.

“What can happen to one can
happen to them all. They under-
stand. Never again will they call us.
I feel it. And Sam knew.”

“Sam is wiser than any man,”
old Ella said. “He was never afraid
of God.”

Henry nodded.

“We will do well to listen when
he speaks. Then we will be wise as
well.”

“Leaders have always praised
God,” Ella said. “Sam has
destroyed him. Is that a different
wisdom?”

“If God were God, Sam could
not have caused him to burn. Sam
will know what is best for man. He
is not like the rest of us.”

“This is the way a leader should
be,” old Ella admitted.

Sam’s thoughts were different,
more far-ranging, as he came
striding down the hill. Behind him
the torch gradually crumbled into a
funeral pyre, which in turn became
glowing, piled masses of red coals

and then a great circular mound i
ashes. For the first time in mar
years, man’s thoughts range
beyond the valley. Sam had studie
the records from Earth, and 1
knew that the valley was not
world. Beyond, the land mu
stretch on and on, space for man
spread over and live in and enjo

No men need pay for blessinj
with their lives. Everyone cou
learn all the wisdom of Earth ar
discover more for themselves, f
there would be no God to prevei
these things.

Sam crossed the stone bridg
Old Henry came through the fiek
to meet him. They were Henrj
fields, those that lay next to tl
bridge. He had known that th^
would not be his much longer, th
soon God would call. He was ol
The old were always called.

“You have killed God,” he sa
to Sam. He looked at the youi
man with a respect and i
admiration he had never shown
anything before. “I want to be tl
first to tell you — the world
glad.”

Sam pushed up the mask ai
smiled.

“I have not killed God,” ^
said. “Who or what God may be
do not know. What I have killed
a being that used and fed on mj
as we use and feed on our pigs. B
not for the same reasons. It hat
us because we eat the plants, t

CHLOROPHYLL

green things that grow in the soil
and make tissue out of air and
energy. It felt that we had no right
to live, since we do not trap our own
iunshine. So it and all its fellow
aeings intended to punish us
Forever.”

He looked across the fields
•eflectively.

“On Earth, many would have
:alled this — Hell.”

The allusion was lost on old
^enry.

“I have never heard the word,”
le said. “I only know that now I
vill never have to make the
)ilgrimage. My tools will never
igain have to be blessed. I won’t
lave to fear.”

“Fear!” Suddenly Sam remem-
lered. “Ginger!”

He ran, the oxygen tank and the
lamethrower clanging together
i^ith each bounding step. He did
lot check his speed until he
eached his own porch. Then he
.falked calmly and slowly inside.

She sat quietly in the chair. The
ag distorted her mouth, but her
yes were steady and sane. Sam’s
nife slashed the binding tapes.
Jently he removed the gag. The
ruised lips smiled.

“Thank Providence!” he
reathed softly and thus unthink-
igly spoke to a God unknown. “I
lought it might have destroyed
ou. But I knew it would if I had
:ft you free. I had no choice.”

“I fought it,” she said proudly.
“I fought it with my mind. It would
have taken away my sanity, but it
wanted me to see you die.”

She flexed fingers and toes,
stretched her slender body to ease
the pain of returning circulation.
She wrinkled her nose.

“Did you have to tie me so
tightly?”

“That wasn’t the pain I feared
for you,” Sam said. “I was afraid
that it would make you break your
own body. Enjoy your hurt. It won’t
come again. The being is dead.”

“I know,” she said. “I felt it
die.” She looked at him curiously.
“You never called it God. Why?”

“Because I knew it wasn’t.”

He was removing the mask,
unstrapping the tank from his
back, unslinging the flamethrower
from his shoulder.

“I can be given no credit. It
could never speak to me, never
affect me in any way. I have read all
the stories of God in the Earth
histories. I knew that there were no
exceptions to the power of God.
Also, I did not think that the God
of man would prey on men.”

“You can be given credit for
courage.”

“Many men have courage. No,
something happened in the body of
my father, or of my mother, or in
the cell that they made together. I
am only what I was born to be.”

She held up her arms.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“Lift me,” she commanded.
“There is something else you were
born to be.”

Thus man had been halted for a
thousand years, but his race did not
die. The grim and deadly tyranny of
the great green beings was the
purging it needed and required.
The weak, the incompetent, all
those who could not endure were
pruned out. What remained was
still the most intelligent, the most
adaptable, the most resilient
species the Galaxy had produced.

“From the records, this world is
much like Earth,” Sam said. “They
hate and fear us, but the green
beings have kept it well. Since they
have chlorophyll, their needs are
not ours. Since they are sessile,
anchored always to one spot, they
have developed in a different way.

“They probably became able to
think in the same way that I was
able to resist them. Genetic change.
Mutation. And once able to think,
they had endless stretches of time
in which to contemplate. Without
the hate, which from our point of
view is not a rational hate, I suspect
that they are very wise.”

Freed from bondage, men
spread from the valley. They
explored southward to the hot
lands, northward until they came to
perpetual snow. And in between
there were great stretches of land

open to the sun and chains of high
mountains and, finally, beyond
them all, an endless mighty sea
And always, crowning each em-
inence, each hill or high spot, were
the great green beings, the onlj
chlorophyll beings that could think
But they were not danger now,
They could, indeed, have influ-
enced the minds of many, though
men now knew them for what thej
were. But they dared not. Men used
fire. The knowledge of what Sam
had done spread to the limits of the
species, and the green beings knew
that they could be destroyed. Theii
resinous, oily bodies were, or could
be, the favorite food of fire.

Sam traveled far. He saw the
hot lands, the icefields, the prairies,
the mountains and the sea. He saw
the people he had freed spreading
over the planet, setting up theii
home sites in many locations —
and he found that he was nol
welcome among them.

Puzzled and hurt, at first he did
not understand. Then he was bitter,
“I have released all men from a
hideous oppression,” he said, “and
they hate me for it. Why?”

It was Ginger who answered
him, and with a wisdom none
would have suspected from that
wide-eyed, flower-petal face.

“You have freed us all,” she
agreed, “but by taking something
away. You have taken our God and
left an emptiness. Where will we

CHLOROPHYLL

turn? What will we worship? We
know that the green beings are not
God, but our need remains. There
must be something greater than
man. Who is it? What is it? We are
confused, deserted. That is why the
faces are turned away from you.”

“But not your face,” Sam
pleaded.

The girl shook her head and
smiled. “Never my face,” she said.
“It is not your fault that we have no
God. You only showed us what was
already true.”

She looked away, out across the
Earthlike landscape. She was
slender and small, but to Sam she
was greater than the greatest of the
beings that showed on every hill.

“I suspect,” she said slowly,
“that every man will have to fill up
the emptiness for himself. And
sometime, somehow, we will find
what we mean by God.”

Still, most men regarded Sam
with suspicion and doubt. And
finally he knew what he must do,
where he must go. Home, after all,
was the open sunny valley where he
had been born. There, at least, the
neighbors who had suffered from
the very being he had destroyed
would still be friendly, still be
grateful. And it was there that he
and the wide-eyed Ginger finally
built their home.

In the building, Sam proved
that, while he was different, he was
still a man like other men. As in the

green beings, the need for
vengeance lay deep in him.

“Men of Earth used these
materials,” said he, “and so will I.”

So first he built a great house of
stone. Then, late in the autumn,
after their leaves had fallen and
each green being stood bare and
stark against the cold sky, he led a
crew of wide-shouldered young men
up the nearest hill. They carried
edged tools, saws and axes, as
another crew of Earthmen had
done a thousand years before. The
green being, almost unconscious in
dormancy, watched them come.
There was nothing it could do. It
would feel no pain, but it knew its
fate. And it knew that it would be
the first of many.

“An Earth house,” Sam said.
“Paneled, floored, and with stair-
ways and porches of fine-grained
wood. The resins and oils give pro-
tection from decay and allow a fine
finish.” He smiled. “And no
Earthman ever before had a home
trimmed with the flesh of God!”

And he never suspected that the
green beings, as their numbers
grew fewer year by year, also had
their dream of God. They spread
their leaves to the warm sun, their
chloroplasts trapped the rays, and
they built them into the substances
that kept all things alive. But they
knew that their sun was not God.

To the great green beings, God,
the ultimate God, was Energy.

Robert Young is a master at a certain type of story that blends
speculative and starkly realistic fiction, for example the grim tale
below concerning a man who listens to commands and does
unpleasant things...

PRNDLL

by ROBERT F. YOUNG

Pick up girl!

The command shocked Keller.

It had been uttered in a guttural
voice whose seeming source was his
own mind. He had just got on NYS
90 and was heading home after a
Saturday stint at the office. His
dashboard clock registered 5:23
P.M.

He saw how white his knuckles
had become, and he forced himself
to relax his grip on the wheel.
Instantly his hands began to
tremble. He became aware of a
faint buzzing in his ears. Beyond
the hood of his Caprice the
throughway unrolled into pale-gold
distances beneath a pale-blue
October sky, late-afternoon traffic
flowing smoothly on either side of
the attenuated island of the mall.

Pick up girl!

This time, the command was
followed by pain — a blinding pain
that exploded in Keller’s mind like
a fragmentation grenade made of

crimson glass, then diminished to
red mist. He nearly lost control of
the Caprice.

Gradually the mist dispersed.
He heard the voice again: That was
sample of what you get if you
disobey!

“Who are you?” Keller whis-
pered.

No answer.

Instinctively he took the next
exit. It brought him into one of the
southern arteries of the city, where
he joined the in-going traffic flow.
He wondered desperately if he’d
gone insane.

Why you not find girl yet?

Give me a chance, Keller
pleaded. This is a bad time of day.
Later on —

Later on will not do! Must have
girl now! Remember pain?

Keller shuddered. I’ll do my
best. But picking up a girl isn 't all
that easy.

Who you think you fool? You

P R N D LL

chaser. Picking up girls your
specialty. Why you think I choose
you?

Keller sighed. I said I'll do my
best.

You better. And you better get
good girl too. Virgin, if possible.

Keller concentrated on his
driving. Maybe if he kept his mind
occupied, the voice would go away.
Meanwhile, he would look for a
girl. He didn’t dare not to.

He had been passing through a
middle-class residential area. Now,
as he grew closer to the city’s core,
the houses gradually gave way to
business places. There were num-
erous bars. When he spotted one
that looked less inauspicious than
the others, he parked and went
inside. He drew a blank. Outside
again in the slanting October
sunshine, he looked up and down
the street. Late shoppers were
climbing in and out of cars, going
in and out of delicatessens and
grocery stores. Buying booze,
mostly. Sixpacks for tomorrow’s
Buffalo Bills game. He felt terribly,
horribly alone. Back behind the
wheel of his Caprice, he rejoined
the traffic flow and stayed with it
till he spotted another bar that
might conceivably contain an
unescorted clean-cut American girl
with a still intact hymen. He
parked, and went inside. A couple
of Saturday-aftemoon drunks were
playing pool, a tired -looking man

in a business suit was reading the
afternoon paper, and a pair of
middle-aged housewives were sip-
ping screwdrivers. The barmaid
was fairly attractive and reasonably
young, but she gave Keller a stony
stare over the whiskey and water
she brought him, and he knewthat
propositioning her would be a
waste of time.

Back behind the wheel of his
Caprice, back in the traffic flow,
sunlight ricocheting from the
burnished hood into his eyes, he
asked, What happens if I can't find
a girl?

For answer, he received a
second sample of the red pain. But
it w'as much milder than the first,
and, moreover, the two whiskies
he’d drunk had lent him a courage
of sorts. What’s your name? he
demanded.

A pause. Then, P R N D L L.

That's not a name. You read it
off the automatic shift.

It will do.

Who are you? What are you?

No answer.

Whatever it was, whoever it
was, it could see through his eyes
and could read his thoughts. At
least it could read his thoughts
when they were mentally expressed
in words. But could it do so if they
weren’t Keller wondered. If he were
to think the way he did most of the
time, in series of images rather
than in words, would he be able to

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

preserve his intellectual privacy?

To find out, he visualized
himself ignoring a bevy of available
girls, U-turning the Caprice,
returning to NYS 90 and resuming
his journey home. Then he waited.

No reaction.

Apparently P R N D L L’s
powers were limited.

Keller was about to try another
bar when out of the corner of his
eye he glimpsed a green Mustang
standing next to the curb with its
hood raised and a tawny-haired girl
leaning over its exposed engine.
The shot was a long one, but he had
to play it. He backed into the first
empty parking space he came to,
forced himself to sit perfectly still
till a quantity of his aplomb
returned, then got out of the
Caprice and walked back. The
Mustang was still there, and so was
the girl.

Keller dressed just behind the
times. He did this deliberately,
knowing that were he to keep
abreast of them they would betray
him. Today he had on a white
turtleneck, a maroon blazer,
gray-checked flare-slacks and
black buckle-strap boots. The
combo lent the exact effect he
wanted: that of a seasoned man of
the world, almost but not quite past
his prime, plainly confident enough
of his prowess to disdain catering to
the calculated vicissitudes of

fashion. He did not wear a hat; he
never did. His hairline, although it
had receded, was still lower than
some men’s half his age, and what
few gray hairs he had contributed
rather than detracted from his
image.

The girl half turned, looked up
at him. Blue eyes went well with the
long tawny hair. Her face was
rather thin. Nice upper lip, though,
and a mouth that was neither too j
wide nor too babyish. Trim .waist.
Nice legs. No wedding band as far
as he could see. She was wearing a
medium-short green skirt, a yellow
pullover and brown kick boots.

“I turn the key and nothing
happens,” she said.

He gave her a reassuring smile.
“I’ll take a look.”

He checked the battery termin-
als, found both clamps to be tight.
The battery was a new one, but he
checked the cells to make sure. The
water level was down, but not
enough to matter. Finally he
checked the tension of the
alternator belt. The give was about
half the length of his thumbnail.
He straightened. “It’s probably
your starter solenoid,” he said.

“Can you fix it?”

“Not without the part. Probably
not with it, either. You need a
mechanic, and mechanics have a
thing about working weekends. Do
you live around here?”

She shook her head.

P R N D L L

He hadn’t thought she did.
“There’re two things you can do,”
he continued smoothly. “You can
climb in my car, and we can start
visiting service stations on the
1000-to-l shot we’ll find one
operated by a competent mechanic
who has the part in stock and
who’ll be willing to leave his place
of business long enough to do a
repair job. Or you can lock up your
car, leave it here till Monday
morning and let me drive you
home.”

She looked at him, at his eyes
mostly; then she looked at the
engine. Finally she looked at him
again. “I live about forty miles
from here — just this side of North
Falls. How far would that be out of
your way?”

“Not far,” he lied.

She looked once more at the
Mustang’s engine. Then she
slammed down the hood, got her
purse out of the front seat and
locked both doors. “I insist that
you let me buy you some gas.”

“Nonsense. I’ve got a full
tank.” (It was only half full, but he
didn’t want to risk stopping at a
service station: the operator just
might be a mechanic, just might.
have the part and just might be
willing to take on a repair job.)
“My name’s Bruce — Bruce
Keller.”

“Carla Banks.”

She got an overnight bag out of

the Mustang’s trunk and accom-
panied him up the street to where
his Caprice was parked. She
climbed in beside him. So far, he’d
been able to hide his nervousness
quite well, but he didn’t know how
long he could continue to do so.
The voice in his mind had been
silent for some time; however, he
knew it would not remain so.
Worse, any moment he might be on
the receiving end of another sample
of the red pain.

Christ! what was he going to

do?

He got a grip on himself,
rejoined the traffic flow and
proceeded to South Park. He took
South Park to Hamburg Street,
and Hamburg Street to Ohio
Street. Ohio Street took him to
Fuhrmann Boulevard, and he
passed over the Father Baker
Memorial Bridge and joined the
traffic flow on the Hamburg
Turnpike. To keep his mind off P R
N D L L and the red pain, he told
Carla about his ex-wife and about
his job as copywriter with Burrow,
Dare, Grebb and Evans. In return,
she told him that she was attending
SONY, that she’d been on her way
home to spend Saturday night and
Sunday with her folks and that she
probably would have got there all
right if she hadn’t gone way out of
her way to visit a friend who wasn’t
in.

P R N D L L put an end to

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Keller’s respite as they were leaving
Woodlawn. Have been studying
girl. Will do nicely.

What now? Keller asked.

Rape her.

Appalled, Keller gasped,
can’t to that!”

Can do. Easy.

“Did you say something, Mr.
Keller?” Carla asked.

Keller shook his head.

Rape her! P R N D L L repeated.
Pull car ojf road!

For Christ’s sake, I can't rape
her in broad daylight!

All right. Keep going. Be dark
soon.

But why rape her? Keller said
desperately. If it’s a piece of ass you
want to be a party to, let me go
about getting it the legitimate way.

“I’m famished,” Carla said.
“There’s a Howard Johnson
restaurant just ahead — let’s stop,
shall we? I’ll treat. Turn right at
the traffic circle.”

YOU KEEP GOING! P R N D L L
screamed.

No, Keller said, slowing. If I
don’t humor her, I may blow the
whole thing. I’ve got to wait till
dark anyway.

Easyforyou to wait! PRNDLL
howled. Lay a new girl every other
night. Me, hundred of nights
in space since last time. Am horny
as hell!

Keller was incredulous. How
did you get in my mind?

Am not in your mind. Am in
ship high, high, high above.
Hovering. I focus teach-beam on
school, assimilate language. Mind-
scanner single you out, say you
1 chaser, good bet to find girl. So I
tune in on you with trans-ence-
phalo-electromagnetizer. You see, I
see. You feel, I feel. Except pain.
Pain on different channel. Ha-ha.
But must work fast. Am being
pursued by members of own species
who say P RN D LL is sex deviate
and who want to lock him back up.

You stole the ship, didn ’t you,
Keller said.

Yes, yes. Steal. Lab ship, many
instruments. Go many planets.
Rape, rape, rape. Good, good,
good. Now will rape again. But
must wait, you say. Very will. Will
wait. But only for little while.

What do you look like? Keller
asked.

Little bit like you. But
handsomer. Much handsomer.

Then why don ’tyou land and do
the job yourself?

Cannot. Earth gravity too
strong. But am talking too much.
Stop, you and girl. Eat. Meantime,
here comes something so you not
forget PRNDLL.

Keller’s third taste of the red
pain was more agonizing than the
second but much less agonizing
than the first. He noticed that
during the few moments he
experienced it, the buzzing in his

PRNDLL

ears was absent. Now that he
thought of it, he was reasonably
certain that the buzzing had been
absent during the previous two
times. The conclusion was obvious;
the buzzing was a side effect of the
artificially induced telepathic con-
tact PRNDLL had established,
and each time the alien administer-
ed the pain he broke the contact,
because, feeling everything Keller
felt, he would feel the pain too.

He might be even more
susceptible to it than Keller, in
which case a massive dose might
kill him.

H’m-m, Keller thought.

“It may well be,” said Carla,
between bites of her ham-on-rye
and dainty forkfuls of potato salad,
“that ‘Babylon Revisited’ was
Scott’s best short story, but I much
more enjoyed his ‘Bernice Bobs Her
Hair.’ Our English lit. instructor,
by the way, is Irish to the bone. On
the side he does book reviews for
the New York Times. He dotes on
Hibernian writers and drools
whenever he brings up Molly
Bloom.”

“Did you ever read The Five
Little Pepper books?” Keller
asked.

Carla blinked.

“It’s a juvenile series,” Keller
elaborated. “Early twentieth cen-
tury. I have a thing about them,
you might say. I always think that if

I ever find a girl who’s read them,
even one of them, she’ll be extra
special.”

“I read a Nancy Drew book
once,” Carla said.

“I’m not surprised. I’m not
surprised at all. It’s almost the
same thing.”

Carla finished her sandwich,
chewed and swallowed a final
forkful of potato salad, pressed a
paper napkin to her lips. She
looked at him shrewdly. “Your
ex-wife — did she ever read any of
The Five Little Pepper books?”

“No, I don’t think she ever
did.”

“You never asked her?”

“You have no idea what my
marriage was like. For the last half
of it, my wife and I were locked in
mute and mortal combat. I can’t
remember what it was she stopped
speaking to me about, but after a
few months of it I stopped speaking
to her, and all you ever heard in the
house after that was the blaring of
the TV set and the slamming of
doors. I took it for as long as I
could, then I — I — ”

“Started chasing?”

“That’s a cruel way of putting
it.”

She regarded him keenly.
“Believe me, Mr. Keller, you’ll
never find a modern girl who’s read
The Five Little Pepper books. You
would do as well to look for a
purple cow.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Keller sighed. The ploy had
never failed before. Clearly, Carla
was made of more sophisticated
stuff than her sisters.

He left half of his cheese-on-rye,
finished his coffee. The buzzing in
his ears blurred the ambient clatter
of dishes and the murmur of voices.
It served as a constant reminder of
his predicament and had destroyed
what little appetite he’d had.

Christ! what was he going to

do?

If he told Carla to get lost, he’d
probably receive a dose of the red
pain that would blast his brains
loose. And if he survived it, he’d
either have to retrieve Carla or start
looking for another victim.

If he went to the police and told
them to lock him up, he’d have to
provide them with a valid reason,
and the only reason he could
provide them with was that he was
under the control of a rapist from
outer space. It sounded worse than
a low-budget science-fiction movie,
rated X. He still only half believed
it himself.

What was he going to do?

To the maximum extent possi-
ble, he had been confining his
thoughts to images. Presently a
picture of a mountain lake whose
mirrorlike surface reflected a
thousand stars took shape in his
mind. He stared at if for a long
time, at a loss to understand where
it had come from and what it

represented. Finally it faded away.

The shadows were long and cool
when he and Carla left the
restaurant and climbed back into
the Caprice. Now we get down to
the brass tacks, P R N D L L
gloated.

Wearily Keller backed out of
his parking place, returned to the
traffic circle and got on Camp
Road. After crossing Highway 20,
he headed east on 62 A. “I was
going to give you directions,” Carla
said, “but you seem to know the
way. Apparently you’ve been to
North Falls before.”

“I went through there once.
Why did they build the business
section on that rocky hillside
instead of in the valley down
below?”

“Maybe so they could fight off
the Indians better.”

Despite her levity, he detected a
faint tautness in her voice. He
could understand why she might be
nervous; after all, she’d known him
for less than two hours. He wanted
to reassure her, to let her know that
he was a gentleman first and a
chaser second, and that she had
nothing to fear from him. But he
couldn’t — not with P R N D L L
running the show.

What the hell was he going to
do?

He couldn’t rape her. Not even
if his life depended on it.

PRNDLL

And his life did depend on it.

Be dark soon, PRNDLL said.

Very soon. The sun, red and
distended, showed occasionally
between the hills, through the gold
and red and russet foliage of the
trees. Keller looked sideways at
Carla. Her tawny hair had a
crimson cast; she seemed bathed in
blood; surreal.

She sensed his sideways stare.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Keller?”

He jostled his thoughts, tried to
free them from P R N D L L’s
telepathic tentacles. He turned on
the radio, punched the selectors till
he got mtisic. Hillbilly. “Country,”
they called it now. “Like to
dance?” he asked.

“Fd love to, sir,” she said, “but
not right now.”

“Can you do the fox trot?”

“Seems like I danced it once or
twice with my father when I was a
little girl.”

The remark hadn’t been
intended to hurt his feelings — he
knew that. She probably thought he
was thirty-four, like all the others.
At the most, thirty-seven. But it
hurt just the same. Momentarily a
reddish mist partially obscured his
vision.

Dusk came. He rolled his
window up. Carla had already
rolled up hers. He held the Caprice
at an even 55. At sporadic
intervals, headlights swam out of
the darkness ahead, resolved into

passing cars. Entering Hillcrest, he
slowed to 35. Soon the little town
diminished to a handful of lights in
the rearview mirror. He hit 55
again.

Is dark enough now.

I know, but I have to find a
secluded place.

He drove for another fifteen
minutes. He tried to think, but his
mind seemed to have gone numb.
Five miles beyond Saundersville,
PRNDLL Said, Stop car!

I can ’t. Not —

STOP CAR!

Keller braked, pulled onto the
shoulder and switched the emer-
gency blinker on. Look —

I think you stall. I think I teach
you lesson!

No, Keller cried . No! 1 —

This time, the pain was molten
steel from a tapped furnace
pouring into and swiftly filling the
ladle of his mind. The crimson slag
of the overflow covered his eyes, his
nose, his mouth, his entire body.
Screaming silently in the crimson
wasteland, he clawed at the fiery
lava, raised his hands for succor to
heavens he could not see, to a god
he had forgot. Abruptly a black pit
opened beneath his feet and he was
falling, falling, the redness all
around him, down, down, down —

“ — for a doctor. Fll get one
somehow. Stay right where you are,
Mr. Keller.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Keller located her in the fading
redness, reached out and seized her
arm before she could slip out of the
car. He realized he had slumped
over the wheel, and he forced
himself into an erect position. “No
— no. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

She hesitated, then closed the
door. He relaxed his grip on her
arm. “Would it maybe be your
heart, Mr. Keller?”

“No. Is there a place near here
where I can pull off the road? It’s
bad business parking here.”

“There’s a rest area just up
ahead ... I still think I should get a
doctor.”

“You’d be wasting your time.”

“An ambulance then? I could
flag down a car, tell them to call in
for one.”

He toyed with the idea. If he
were admitted to a hospital, Carla
would be safe. But P R N D L L
would still be with him; PR N DLL
looking at the nurses and the
nurse’s aides through his eyes,
ready at the slightest provocation to
administer the red pain. Keller
shuddered. No, an ambulance
wasn’t the answer.

He switched off the blinker and
pulled back onto the highway.
When he came to the rest area, he
drove into it gratefully and parked
in a clearing among the trees. He
turned off the engine and left the
parking lights on; then he rolled
down his window and breathed

deeply of the night air. It was cool
and damp, redolent of dead and |
dying leaves. He could feel Carla
looking at him in the dashlight, but
he did not return her gaze. Instead,
he concentrated on his predica-
ment.

It boiled down to a simple set of
alternatives; he could rape the girl, ;
in which case P R N D L L might
set him free, or he could continue
to refrain from raping her, in which
case P R N D L L would administer
another massive dose of the red
pain. In the first case, he would
undoubtedly go on living; in the
second, he would undoubtedly die.

You want another lesson?

Let me get my breath, will you?
You nearly killed me.

I give you three full rotations of
the black-and-white indicator on
your car's chronometer.

Three minutes.

“Are you feeling better now,
Mr. Keller?”

“A little.”

Perhaps there was a third
alternative.

The alien instruments that were
being employed to manipulate him
might be beyond his comprehen-
sion, but their means of accom-
plishing their purpose was not. Put

simply, they had adapted his mind
to function as a receiver for
P R N D L L’s commands and for
the red pain.

Two minutes.

PRNDLL

They had also adapted his mind
to function as a transmitter. No,
not just his mind — his entire body.
Everything he saw, everything he
felt, everything he thought — all
were transmitted instantly to
P R N D L L. It was true that the
alien didn’t respond to thoughts
expressed in images, but this didn’t
imply that he didn’t receive them; it
merely implied that he didn’t
interpret them — either because
they were too scrambled or because
his mind functioned differently
from Keller’s.

One minute.

The red pain was transmitted
from a separate source. Every time
PRNDLL administered it, he
severed contact with Keller so that
he wouldn’t experience it himself.
If he could somehow be tricked into
administering a massive dose of it
without severing contact, would he
be able to survive it?

In view of the fact that Keller
probably wouldn’t be able to
survive it himself, the question was
academic.

Thirty seconds.

Was there a way that the pain
could be fed back to the sender
without the receiver experiencing
it?

Could it be reflected?

Fifteen seconds.

Suddenly Keller remembered
the mountain lake that had taken
shape in his mind back at the

Howard Johnson restaurant and
which he had found so puzzling. He
did not find it the least bit puzzling
now. He knew now that it had
originated in his unconscious, that
unconsciously he’d known the
answer to his predicament ever
since he’d deduced that PRNDLL
might be susceptible to the red
pain.

Ten seconds.

But was it the right answer?
Right or not, it was the only one
Keller had. He took a deep breath;
then he closed his eyes and pictured
the starlit mountain lake in his
mind, concentrating on its mirror-
like surface. It was essential that
PRNDLL be infuriated to such an
extent that he would act first and
think afterward, if he was still able
to, and so Keller chose his words
carefully. Oddly, he knew exactly
what to say. You're not a sex
deviate, PRNDLL. You turned
rapist because on your own world
you could no longer get it any other
way. Because you started turning
females off instead of on. Old age
caught up to you, PRNDLL.
You're nothing but a —

Keller paused as the lake in his
mind turned bright red. The
brightness intensified, half blind-
ing him, and he saw that it was
raining down from above. Then, as
suddenly as it had begun, the rain
reversed itself and the brightness
streamed back into the sky. An

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

anguished scream sounded in his Keller tightened his grip on her
mind, abruptly broke off. The hand. “How long would it take you
buzzing in his ears ceased. to fix one cup of instant coffee?

He opened his eyes. Carla had “I’m really sorry, Mr. Keller,
got out of the car and was standing but there just isn’t time. Now, if
in the clearing. “Look, Mr. you’ll please let go my hand—’’
Keller,’’ she cried, pointing. “A “Circles,” Keller said,
falling star!” “Beg pardon?”

P R N D L L’s ship? Perhaps. “Concentric circles. The circle
Whether it was or not, Keller was of relatives. The circle of friends,
certain that the alien had adminis- The circle of acquaintances. You
tered his final dose of the red pain, can’t break through them — ever.”

With an abrupt movement, she
“Is this it?” pulled her hand free and got out of

“That’s the house, Mr. Keller. I the car. He saw naked contempt in
still wish you’d let me buy you some her eyes, knew that it had been
gas.” there all along, camouflaged out of

Keller pulled into the gravel forced respect for social conven-

driveway and moved the automatic tion. Carrying her purse and her

shift lever to PARK. The house overnight bag, she ran across the

was three-storied and dark. Screen- lawn and up the front-porch steps,
ing it from the road were four She got her key out of her purse
gnarled sugar maples. Starlit fields and opened the door. She stood in
stretched beyond, and on either the doorway, looking back to where
side, and directly across the road, Keller sat stunned in the Caprice,
the dark mass of a bam or shed “Go home and soak your dentures,
broke the monotony of other starlit you old fool!” she shouted. “I knew
fields. “No one seems to be home.” what you wanted all along! She
“No one is. Mom and dad still stepped inside and slammed the
do their shopping Saturday night.” door.

She picked up her purse and

her overnight bag, opened the car Keller got in by smashing one of
door and started to get out. the front windows and stepping
“Thanks thousands, Mr. Keller.” through it into the living room. She
He seized her hand. “I could was frantically dialing the phone
stand a cup of coffee.” when he entered the fluorescent-

“I’m sorry — I just haven’t bright kitchen. He knocked the
time. I’ve a date at eight thirty and phone to the floor, base and all,
1 have to get ready.” and shoved her against the kitchen

P R N D L L

stove. She screamed. The room, the
appliances, her face — all had a
strange reddish cast. He tore off
her skirt; when she fought him, he
struck her in the stomach. She
doubled up. He hit her again, on
the side of the head this time,
tumbling her to the floor. The alien
pain was as nothing to the pain he
knew now. He rid himself of it with
cruel, savage thrusts backgrounded
by screams, then whimpers. The

whimpering got to him after a
while, and he put an end to it by
employing the base of the phone as
a bludgeon. He went out the way
he’d come in. He could see his
name on the automatic shift as he
backed out of the driveway and
began the long trip home. It glowed
mockingly in the lonely darkness of
the car —

P R N D L L...

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Mercury Press. Inc., PO Box 56, Cornwall, Ct. 06753

There is, they say, a conflict
between storytelling and art. At
times I’ve said it myself, although
not in so many words. Most critical
lexicons are preloaded with the sort
of natural bias that assumes fiction
is written the way it reads.
“Storytelling” is banged out
helter-skelter at a breakneck pace,
one assumes because that’s how the
narrative gallops through one’s
receptors, whereas “art” is allusive,
intricate, “intellectual” and care-
ful. “Storytellers” use short, sharp
sentences, and, with the important
exception of one genre, plain
words: In sword-and-sorcery no-
vels, they will at times be required
to be so poetastic as to verge on the
incomprehensible. But after all,
once you’ve described one filmy-
robed priestess at a verdigrised
fane, you’ve described ’em all, and
the reader knows what is meant.
Creators of “art,” on the other
hand, will sometimes not use
sentences at all, or at least not in
any immediately significant se-
quence, and have larger vocabular-
ies both of words and of t3rpefaces.
So how can there not be antipathy?

Well, of course, that swordplay
scene over there may be in its tenth
draft by the time its clangings and
cries reach your inward ear,
whereas that novelette over there
which takes you all day to read, and
underpins an entire new critical

ALOIS BUDRYS

Books

Stellar Science Fiction Stories
t2, Judy-Lynn del Rey, editor,
Ballantine, $1.50.

The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton,
by Larry Niven, Ballantine,
$1.50.

Gate Ivrel, byC.J. Cherryh, Daw
Books, $1.25.

The Third Industrial Revolution,
by G. Harry Stine, Putnam,
$7.95.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

school, may have been dashed out
overnight by some starveling in a
dead heat with an evietion notice,
glugging at eheap wine to keep his
imagination fluent. Nor however
does this mean that one writer’s
tenth draft is as effective as another
writer’s first, or the same writer’s
first on another day.

What it boils down to is
perceived intent. When a reader
sees a story written in nonsequen-
tial paragraphs, or introduced by a
quote from Hesse, or straightfor-
wardly told but concerned with
someone named “he,” who in great
detail wanders within a megalithic
structure that smells and looks like
the inside of a guitar case, there is
reason to believe the writer intends
a message — an appeal to the
intellect, cloaked within the osten-
sible narrative. When, however, it is
seen that the hero’s concern for the
oncoming sword is occasioned by
the sword’s interposition of an
obstacle between him and the
golden altar, this is an appeal to the
emotions.

In our culture — almost
uniquely so, my limited education
confidently tells me — intellect and
emotion are seen not only as
opposed but as bitterly opposed;
one as Good and the other as Evil.
This creates certain consequences
in our fiction — and in its appraisal
— which are not founded on any
objective material in the work. We

tend to slight the careful craftsman
who either wittingly or of an open
heart teases and rubs at the scene
of swordplay until all dross is
smoothed away and the underlying
message of sympathy is revealed
clear to the reader’s subconscious.
We tend to overvalue the cocksure
tyro, too much inspired to be
hindered by common p’s and q’s,
who takes out insurance before-
hand by clothing an allegorical
opening paragraph in eccentric
syntax, or by concerned allusion to
purely topical matters that will be
unintelligible a year hence, by
which time our artist will be
wondering grumpily where all the
eocktail parties have gone.

We tend as well to assume that
who writes what we like is careful,
and who writes what we don’t is
heedless. But in any event the fact
is generally that those who write, or
publish, or extol the story which
appears intended as entertainment
are in our day and time noticeably
defensive in the pervading presence
of those who appear to be doing
otherwise.

Which brings us first to Stellar
#2, second in a series of original
anthologies aggressively presented
by its editor and publisher as an
outpost of old-fashioned story-
telling SF in a wicked world full of
“mere messages wrapped up in
inflated and often self-conscious

BOOKS

prose.”*

It is a showy and effective tactic,
often used deftly by people named
del Rey, to invert the attacker’s
argument before he makes it:
“storytelling” is here Good, “art”
is Evil. Yet-obviously one would not
make such a point of the annual
Stellar’s unyieldingly presented
editorial policy if it were a
fashionable one. “I want ...
beginnings, middles and — most
important — ends!”* J-L del Rey
declared in her original letter to
literary agents, further defining a
perceived difference between the
majority of available work and the
sought-after minority.

Ultimately, the product of this
effort proved to be a solid
moneymaker. Sneer if you must,
but since advertising and promo-
tion budgets for original paper-
backs are nil, the industry has
always counted reader dollars as
votes in a continuing poll of reader
preferences. A number of questions
remain open. One series I like
goes: Is this an endorsement of the
ostensible work, or of publishing
from the underdog position? If one
asserts that the work sold on merit,
spurning the suggestion that
readers will briefly endorse experi-

* Quoted from the introduction to
Stellar #1, an outstanding commercial
success.

mentation for novelty’s own sake,
how can you propose that the
fashionability of “experimental
art” stems merely from a reader
willingness to dabble briefly? And,
all else aside, are these stories really
different — furthermore, in the way
you say they’re different?

That last question is a winner;
it’s the one Harlan Ellison can’t
answer anent the Dangerous
Visions series, either, thus indicat-
ing strongly that a question doesn’t
care who wields it, or against what.

We shall attempt here today to
tell you what I think; that’s as close
as we can come to objective reality,
and that’s a rather long jump from
where I’d be comfortable.

Ordinarily, I despise editorial
comment which suddenly goes
second-person and mealymouths
“It’s your magazine. Dear Reader,”
or “It’s your field to make of what
you will.” Nonsense. It’s the field
supported by the resultant of
hundreds of thousands of opinions,
or at the very least so the editors
and especially the publishers
believe. Every strong-willed editor
has always found an enthusiastic
audience; it is the timid and the
vacillatory who talk of “finding
the audience and serving its
interests.” But I am about to be
falsely accused of digressing. What
I mean to say quickly is that in this
case, it is ultimately up to you
whether the Judy-Lynn del Rey

* ibid.

position is viable. Not only do the
early returns indicate that it is, but
by extension all this “art”/“old-
fashioned storytelling” stuflf is
likely to be the bunk. Because it
appears likely that in fact while we
might not know much about old-
fashioned storytelling, we know
what we like.

There are eight stories in Stellar
2: Isaac Asimov’s long, moving
robot story, “Bicentennial Man,”
which may well be as much the star
of this volume as Clifford D.
Simak’s “The Brich Clump Cylin-
der” led Stellar 1\ “Mistake,” a
very short snapper from Larry
Niven which could as readily have
been replaced by any other little
notion; “Stuck With It,” a rather
routine and over-long but neverthe-
less genuine Hal Clement story;
“Song of Dying Swans” by Jack C.
Haldeman II, and “Sic Transit: A
Shaggy Hairless-Dog Story” by
Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop,
of which the first is as slight and
predictable as the Niven and the
second is imitation Lafferty bent
engagingly in the service of a
message, but a message neverthe-
less, with a gagline rather than an
ending; “Tindar-B” by Patrick G.
Conner, as bad an imitation Nat
Schachner story as ever you’d want;
and two rather interesting entries
which, without disservice to the
Asimov, will each develop its own
coterie of admirers. One is James

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

White’s “Custom Fitting” — a
simple, very English tale about the
tailor who must design acceptably
Terrestrial garb for a centauroid j
ambassador from the stars to the
Court of St. James; a gem, gentle
readers, a veritable gem — and the
other is “Unsilent Spring,” by
Richard Simak, a chemical engin-
eer, and his father Clifford.

The premise in “Unsilent
Spring” is that we have become
dependent on DDT traces, and that
those of us who are listless, plagued
by vague muscular aches, irritable,
overeating — in short, most of us in
real life — are suffering from the
systemic effects of DDT withdrawal
under the regulations which have
prohibited its use.

The story is told through one of
niff Simak’s patented characters
— the conscientious old country
doctor — and faithful readers of
Astounding and the old Galaxy will
recognize him at once. What
Richard has contributed, in addi-
tion to the premise and the
biochemical rationale, is that air of
chilly verisimilitude.

As a service to F&SF readers,
this column is pleased to report
that our inquiry of the authors
reveals that our malaise must be
ascribed to other causes — the
authors fudged just enough to
make the premise purely fictional.
But I will bet you that DDT-with-
drawal will be a topic of serious, in

BOOKS

fact grave and sometimes impas-
sioned debate in pseudoscientific
circles just as soon as word reaches
them.

A good anthology by its lights,
and a good issue of a solid
magazine, were it one. The Asimov
is right up there — as good a
novelette as he’s written in a long
time, from the same armamentar-
ium that yielded “The C-Chute”
and “The Martian Way.” Having it
be a Robotics Laws story makes it
even better, of course, and the
Clement, and the Clifford Simak
style add their freight of nostalgia.

But the White, excellent in all
its respects though it may be, bears
no trace of that “old-fashioned”
touch. “Tindar-B” is relentlessly
bad, reminding its reader of every
‘living planet’ yarn he has ever
read, combined with the artificial
conflict plot about the pale,
despised ‘observational specialist’
which was old when van Vogt wrote
“Discord in Scarlet,” or whatever
he called it, and equipped with a
resolution which the editor allows
the writer to impose without
justifying. This seems a direct
contradiction of all the policy
issertions remaining unshattered
ifter the Niven, the unshaggy dog
itory — which is delightful where it
•ecalls Lafferty — and “Swans,”
vhich is another banal narrative
vith a banal arbitrary ending.

It’s hard, hard, to put together

a bulletproof issue, much less a
bulletproof policy. Would we be
best off if we simply read the stuff
and never talked about it?

The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton,
by Larry Niven, for instance, is
blurbed and bannered by Ballan-
tine as a tough book-length
creation about menace, while inside
the author contributes a long,
thoughtful essay on the nature of
cerebral SF detective fiction, which
is more — but not altogether more
— like what these three coupled-up
novelettes are.

There is nothing wrong with a
creative craftsman’s having a
rationale for his work, either in
advance or after the audience
shows some sign of interest.
(Audiences frequently demand, not
too gently, that their favorite
writers explain themselves. This
gives rise to a lot of stuff that
Hercules would divert a river
through. But some of it is useful
and much of it is entertaining in
some way.)

Be that however it is, Gil
Hamilton is an operative of ARM, a
22nd-century investigative body
situated in Niven’s “known space”
universe with its Belters and its
transplant organleggers. Hamilton
is an ex-Belter who lost his right
arm in a mining accident. There-
after, he developed an “imaginary”
telekinetic arm which allows him a

limited repertoire of stunts and
some unexpectedly deadly capabil-
ities. He also returned to Earth,
where socialized medicine gave him
a replacement transplant actual
arm.* Thrice-armed, Hamilton
solves two lockroom puzzles and
one in which the known criminal is
ingeniously hidden. In between, he
gets a little of what we in
Spillane-space call “tail,” drinks a
little, and gets shot at and variously
menaced, but that’s all persiflage.
Niven’s interest is clearly in pulling^
off the difficult stunt of recounting
formal ‘tec puzzles in an imaginary
universe.

It seems to me that several
times I found myself either
skipping over paragraphs of
ratiocination or wishing that I had;
nevertheless, these stories are
entertaining, obviously the pro-
ducts of an interesting intelligence,
and integral to the history of
“known space,” a canon of which
many Niven fans, myself among
them, are quite fond. One could
buy them as tough ’tec or as John
Dickson Carr brought forward on
his ear and be happy either way. As
entertainment, they’re quite artful.

* Ballantine's advance promotional
blurbs for the book refer to "the famed
one-armed operative of ARM, thus
proving once again how carefully PR
staff people sample the precious stuff
they sell.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

On your newsstands. Dear
Readers, is a DAW book with a
bluish cover, written by C. J.
Cherryh. It depicts the obligatorily
chunky barbarian female wielding
a sword, fronted bv a glowering
bronzed retainer. The title type is
almost impossible to decipher;
what it spells, one finds, is Gate of
Ivrel. Never mind that you never
heard of Ms. C. J. Cherryh before.
Donald A. Wollheim, the veteran
editor who made a novelist out of
Phil Dick, who found Mark
Geston, and in fact created Ace
Books essentially out of his own
imagination before deservedly
striking out on his own and leaving
Ace to be picked over by
scavengers, has done his trick
again. Cherryh — who benefits
from a glowing and commendably
unenvious special introduction by
Andre Norton — is a born story-
teller.

While not of the “magnitude oi
Tolkein and Merritt” — blurb-
writing makes strange bedfellows
— or as intricate a worker as Le
Guin, Cherryh produces a “novel ol
barbarian worlds” fully worthy oi
the company of Leigh Brackett oi
C. L. Moore, far less slapdash thar
Merritt, considerably less boring
than Tolkein, and, while noi
impossible to put down, very, verj
easy to return to.

The world of the novel might — -
might not — be Earth; rather, on<

BOOKS

would guess that Morgaine has
come to this world next after
leaving Earth behind in her infinite
journey through the gates that span
the universe. She is the last of her
band of a hundred whose mission
can only end in death, and again
one hears an echo of Camelot,
perhaps only because one would
like to.

Her story here is told through
Vanye the warrior, native outcast of
this world, who follows her at first
because he has no choice, and then
because he has no heart to leave
her. Together and sometimes
separately, they pursue the road to
the Gate of Ivrel through lands with
what to me are vaguely Welsh
names, among clans and nations
which have rightly feared and
cursed Morgaine’s memory for a
hundred years, and in which nearly
every man’s hand is against the
bastard Vanye, who slew one of his
brothers and maimed the other,
driving his father and his father’s
wife to die.

There is of course the question
of how long Cherryh worked on this
manuscript, and how much labor
she might expend on the next. Her
sense of pacing is not sure; too
much is spent on a minor incident,
not enough on another. Her ability
to create tension is unpracticed; she
has only one means of surprising
her protagonists, and that is to
always underplay. That is not a

“Robert

Silverberg
is the
best”*

A science fiction master takes robots,
computers, space ships, time machines,
and other traditional paraphernalia of
science fiction and uses them in very
unconventional ways in this outstanding
and highly amusing new collection of
stories.

by Robert
Silverberg

S6.95, now at your bookstore

RANDOM HOUSE A

i;: Barry N. Matzberg cijn

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

trick to rely on throughout. And
her supporting characters can be
seen to be reacting arbitrarily. In
particular Erij, Vanye’s unhanded
brother, weathervanes frantically
in response to Cherryh’s attempts
to depict duality of character,
which emerge instead as a rather
forced attempt to give Vanye an
uncle, a brother, and an enemy all
out of the same limited cast. The
exotic language, imposed on a
society already complicated by
caste and clan, acts to eventually
bore a reader who began by
attempting to follow them. All of
these are apprentice faults, listed
here because Cherryh’s obvious
underlying talents — and the
immediate rewards of reading Gate
of Ivrel — fully justify taking an
interest.

If you respond at all to tales of
adventure in faerie lands, I can
almost guarantee you that Gate of
Ivrel will come as a happy surprise,
and that while it ain’t no Silverlock,
with portions of which it compares
either directly or as if in mirror
image, we can expect a m.ature
Cherryh to be fully an equal of John
Myers Myers, or a Brackett, or the
Leiber of the Nehwon stories, or
Jirel’s singer.

Children reading her will grow
to love fiction. And when they are
old enough, they will be taught
what’s wrong with it. So goes the
world and its study. Could we not
all sit under a tree, each telling a

tale in turn, and none to judge
which of us is king and which is
beggar?

For those who would enjoy a
likely glimpse into a near future
that most assuredly will occur, in
some part at least, let me
recommend The Third Industrial
Revolution, by G. Harry Stine
(Putnam, $7.95). I do not know
enough science and technology, so I
will not frequently impose non-
fiction reviews on you. But here in
one slimmish volume is something
to put on the shelf between Willy
Ijefs Engineers’ Dreams and Alvin
Toffler’s Future Shock, and to
hand to people who ask what good
all this space exploration is
expected to be.

Stine is an enthusiast, and so
are his editors: “ ... explains what
glory lies before us” is a bit toplofty
for a book that explains what you
can do with a perfectly round ball
bearing. And at $7.95, you had
better be a member of the Club of
Rome before you go scattering
copies around. But it’s going to be a
basic book at your friendly
neighborhood futurology sessions,
and its sweeping optimisms distill
down to a hardheaded sort of
encouragement for the notion that
we are not, in fact, anywhere near
the brink of extinction, or even as
yet fairly begun on the road to the
next gate.

Alan Dean Foster is the author of several sf novels and Star Trek
adaptations. His first story for F&SF, one that should please all
the new shark fans in our audience, concerns a search for a Great
White, one that from all the evidence would have to be almost 100

feet long...

by ALAN DEAN FOSTER

He came out of the abyss and
out of the eons, and He didn’t
belong. His kind had passed from
the world long ago, and it was
better thus for the world, for They
were of all Nature’s creations the
most terrible.

But still He survived, last of His
kind, a relic of the time when They
had ruled most of this world. He
was old, now, terribly old, but with
His kind it showed little. He’d
stayed to Himself, haunting the
hidden kingdom of darkness and
pressure. But now, again, some-
thing impelled Him upwards,
something inside the superb engine
of Himself drove Him towards the
light, something neither He nor
anyone could understand.

Two men died. The reason was
basic.

The rain had worked itself out
and the sun was shining by the time

Poplar reached the station. The
building was as unspectacular as
the simple sign set into the white
stucco.

UNITED STATES
OCEANOGRAPHIC
RESEARCH STATION
DEPARTMENT OF THE
INTERIOR
AMERICAN SAMOA

He pushed through a series of
doors and checkpoints, occasion-
ally pausing to chat with friends
and co-workers. As station director,
it was his obligation as well as a
pleasure.

The door to his own offices was
half ajar. Long ago he’d lost the
habit of stopping to admire the
gold letters set into the cloudy
glass.

DR. WOODRUTH L. POPLAR
DIRECTOR

He paused in front of Elaine’s
desk. She’d arrived some six

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

months ago, the first crimp in a
routine otherwise unbroken for the
past five years. His first reaction
had been confused. He still was.
She swiveled around from her pile
of books to face him.

In her midtwenties, Elaine Shai
had tiny, delicate features that
would keep her looking childlike
into her forties and fifties. Long
auburn hair fell loosely in back,
framing small blue eyes, a tiny gash
of a mouth, and a dimpled chin. In
contrast, her unnervingly specta-
cular figure was enveloped in print
jeans and a badly outflanked white
blouse. She had a fresh yellow
frangipani behind one ear.

She looked great.

The elfin illusion was blurred
only when she opened her mouth.
Her accent was pure Brooklyn. It
had disconcerted Poplar only once,
when he’d greeted her on her
arrival at the airport. From that
point, for all it mattered, she could
have chattered away in Twi.

But she bothered him.

“Well, what are you staring at.
Tree?”

“You must be using a new
shampoo,” he said easily. “Your
follicles are in bloom.”

She grinned, touched the flower
lightly. “Pretty, isn’t it? He’s in
your office. I got tired of him
staring at the door. Strange old
bird. Never took his hands off that
package. But you know these

small-island Matai better than I do.
Doctor. Stuffy.”

“Proud, you mean.”

She popped her bubblegum at
him. That was her one disgusting
habit. He pushed open the door to
his office.

As always, his first glance was
reserved for the magnificent view of
the harbor out his back window. He
was always afraid he’d come in one
day and find a view of downtown
New York, the one from his old
office at Columbia. Reassured, he
turned to greet the man seated in
front of his desk.

Standing in front of his chair,
he managed to take a fast inventory
of the papers and envelopes
padding his desk while at the same
time extending a greeting hand.

“Talofa,” he said.

“Hello, Dr. Poplar. My name is
Ha’apu.” The oldster’s grip was
firm and tight. He sat down when
Poplar did.

The director stared at thcTnan
across from him. On second and
third glance, maybe he wasn’t so
old. That Gauguinish face, wea-
therbeaten and sunburnt, could
have as well seen forty summers as
seventy. The few lines running in it
were like sculpture in a well-
decorated home, placed here and
there strategically, for character, to
please the eye. The hair was cut
short and freckled with white.

The Matai retained a taut.

blocky build. Ropes of stringy
muscle flexed when his arms
shifted. He matched Poplar’s 175
cms. in height.

“I’ve come a distance to see
you, Dr. Poplar.’’

“You sure have, all by yourself,
if what they tell me is true. I’m
flattered.” He changed to his best
fatherly-executive style, which was
pretty sad. “How are things on
Tafahi?”

The old chief shook his head
slowly. “Not good. Sipce He came.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” replied
Poplar in what he hoped was a
convincing display of sincerity.
Privately he didn’t give much of a
damn about daily life on Tafahi.
“Uh ... who is ‘He’?”

“I have heard over the television
that you are a Doctor to the Sea. Is
this true?”

Poplar smiled condescendingly.
“I can’t cure storms or improve
fishing, if that’s what you mean.”
Educational television had per-
formed miracles in reaching and
teaching the widely scattered
Polynesian and Melanesian peoples
throughout the Pacific.

It was Ha’apu’s turn to smile.
“I still think we may be better at
that than you.” He turned somber
again. “By Sea-Doctor, I mean that
it is your business, your life, to
study what the ocean is, what lives
in it, and why Tangaroa does the
things he does.”

“That’s a very astute sum-
mation,” replied the director. He
felt the sea-god himself would have
approved, and his estimation of this
man’s intelligence went up a notch.

Ha’apu seemed satisfied. “So I
believed. I wanted to make certain I
understood. My mind takes longer
to think things than it once did.
What I have brought to show you
....” he indicated the small package
in his lap, “... could be understood
and believed only by such a
person.”

“Of course,” said Poplar,
sneaking a fast glance at his watch.
He wished the chief would come to
the point. Then Poplar could
haggle, politely refuse, kindly
suggest the chief try the usual
tourist markets downtown and
wharfside, and he could get to
work. He’d found one new shell this
morning that .... But he didn’t want
to be rude by hurrying the
conversation. Some Matai were
easily insulted. And he wasn’t
famous for his diplomatic manner.

Ha’apu was working at the
small package. It was tightly bound
in clean linen and secured with
twine.

“But first you must promise me
you will be careful of whom you
speak to about this. We have no
wish to endure an assault of the
curious.”

Poplar thought back to the
moaning jetliner that had passed

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

overhead this morning, crammed to
the gills with bloated statesiders
eager for a glimpse of the quaint
locals betwixt brunch and supper,
and applauded the Matai’s atti-
tude. He wasn’t all that naive.

“I promise it will be so, Matai.”

Ha’apu continued to work
deliberately with the knots. “You
are familiar with Niuhi?”

“Yes, certainly.” He peered at
the shrinking pile of cloth and
twine with renewed interest. A good
carving of Niuhi would be
something of a novelty. At least it
wasn’t yet another dugout or tiki.

“Then you will know this,” said
Ha’apu solemnly. He removed an
irregular shaped object and placed
it carefully on the desk in front of
the director.

Poplar stared at it for a long
moment before he recognized it for
what it was. The realization took
another moment to fully penetrate.
Slowly he reached out and picked it
up. A rapid examination, a few
knuckle taps convinced him it was
real and not a clever fake. It wasn’t
the sort of thing one could easily
fake. And besides, even the
simplest islander would know he
couldn’t get away with it. He
brought it up to eye level.

“Ye gods and little fishes,” he
murmured in astonishment.

It wasn’t a carving.

It was a tooth. And it was quite
impossible.

The tooth was almost a perfect
triangle. He reached into his desk
and brought out a ruler, laid it
alongside the hard bone. Slightly
under 18 cms. long, about 14 cms.
wide at the bottom and over five
thick. The base was slightly curved
where it fit into the jaw. Both
cutting edges were wickedly ser-.
rated, like a saw. He stared at it for
a long, long time, running his
fingers along the razor-sharp
cutting edges, testing the perfect
point. A magnifying glass all but
comfirmed its reality. That failed to
temper his uncertainty.

“Where did you get this,
Ha’apu? And are there any more?”
he asked softly.

“This was taken from the wood
of a paopao.” The Matai smiled
slightly. “There is another.”

It took Poplar about thirty
seconds to connect this with what
the chief had told him earlier.
Einsteinian calculations aside, he
could still add up the implications.
He leaned back in his chair.

“Now Ha’apu, you’re not going
to try and convince me that this
tooth came out of the mouth of a
living Great White!”

The chief began slowly, picking
his words. “The Doctor is very sure
of himself. About three weeks ago,
two young men from my village
were out fishing an area we rarely
visit, rather far from Tafahi. There
is better fishing in other directions.

and closer to home, but they wished
also a little adventure. They did not
return to us, even hours after
nightfall.

“All of the men of the village,
including myself, set out to search
for them. We were not yet worried.
We knew where they had gone.
Perhaps their boat had been
damaged, or both had been
injured. There was no moon that
night. One cannot see far onto the
ocean at night by only torch and
flashlight. We did not find them.

“What we did find, floating by
a small reef and still anchored to
the coral, was the rear half of their
paopao. It had been snapped in
two. Dr. Poplar. That tooth you
hold now in your hand was buried
in the side of the wreckage.
Television and great jet airplanes
admitted. Doctor, old beliefs still
linger on most of the islands. I am
the most educated man in my
village and proud of my learning.
But this frightened me. We have
lived with the sea too long to doubt
what might come from it. We put
on an exhibition of rowing that
could not be matched, Dr. Poplar,
in any of the Olympic games.

“It was very quiet on Tafahi the
next day. Fishing, a daily task for
us, had grown suddenly unpopular.

I pointed out there was still a
chance to recover the bodies or ...”
he winced “... parts of them. But no
one would return to that reef.

“I went alone. It is a small atoll
... very tiny, not on any but the most
detailed of your maps, I should
guess. That was where our two men
had gone to fish. To the northeast
of it, I believe, the ocean bottom
disappears very fast.”

Poplar nodded. “The northern
tip of the Kermadec-Tonga Trench
runs across there. In spots the sea
floor drops almost straight down
for, oh, 3500, 3600 fathoms ... and
more.”

“As you say. Doctor. The sun
does not go far there. It is where He
dwells.

“I anchored my paopao behind
the protection of the little reef, safe
from the breakers on the other side.
It was where the men had
anchored. Swimming was not
difficult, despite a slight current.”

“If you thought you might
encounter a big Great White
prowling around down there, why’d
you go in?” asked Poplar shrewdly.

The chief shrugged. “My family
have been chiefs and divers for
enough generations for my ge-
nealogy to bore you. Doctor. I
respect Niuhi and know him. I was
careful. Anyhow, someone had to
do it. I did not swim too long or too
deep. I had only mask and fins and
did not use the weights. I also have
respect for age, including my own.

“The small lunch I had brought
with me did not take long to eat.
The afternoon was long, the sun

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

pleasant. I dove again.

“I had given up and was
swimming back to the boat when I
noticed a dark spot in the water to
my left. It was keeping pace with
me. The water was clear, and so it
must have been far away to be so
blurred. It paced me all the way
back to the boat. Despite the
distance I knew it was Him.”

“Mightn’t it have been ...?”
Poplar didn’t finish the question.
Ha’apu was shaking his head.

“My eyes, at least, are still
young. It was Him. I could not be
absolutely certain He was watching
me. I doubt it. Faster or slower I
did not swim. A sudden change of
stroke might have caught His
attention. But I was glad when I
was in the bottom of my boat,
breathing free of the sea.

“I waited and watched for a
long time, not daring to leave the
small shelter of the reef. Once, far
away, I think I saw a fin break the
surface. If it was a fin, it was taller
than a tall man. Doctor. But it
might not have been. It was far
away and the sun was dropping.

“I have only been truly afraid,
and I say this honestly, a few times
in my life. To be alone on the sea
with Him was terrible enough. To
have been caught there in the dark
would have frozen the blood of a
god. Then I knew the legend was
true.”

“What legend?” asked Poplar.

“Whoever sees Him is forever
changed. Doctor. His soul is
different, and a little bit of it is
stolen away by Him. The rest is
altered forever.”

“In what way?” Poplar in-
quired. Better to humor the old
man. He was interested in the
damn tooth, not local superstition.

“It depends so much on the
man,” the Matai mused. “For
myself, the sea will never again be
the open friend of my youth. I ride
upon it now and look into its depths
with hesitation, for any day, any
hour. He maybe come for me.

“My people were surprised to
see me. They had not expected me
to return.”

Poplar considered silently.
“That’s quite a story you want me
to swallow. In fact, it’s pretty
unbelievable.”

“A strange thing for you to say,
Sea-Doctor,” smiled Ha’apu. “But
I do not blame you. Come back
with me. Bring a good boat and
your diving tools. I will show you
what remains of our young men’s
paopao. And then I will take you to
the spot where 1 saw Him, if you
dare. He may have returned to the
deeps. Surely this is a rare thing, or
He would have been seen before.
There must be a purpose for it.”

B.S., M.S., Ph.D., he thought
hard for a moment. The legend
stuff was all bushwah, of course.
But the tooth ... he tried to visualize

its owner, and a little shiver went
down his spine. This business about
soul-changing ... ridiculous! ... he,
frightened of another fish?

“This tooth could be very, very
old, you know. They’ve been found
before, like new. Although,” he
swallowed and cursed himself for it,
“not quite of this size. According to
the best estimates these creatures
became extinct only very recently.”

“Creatures? There is only one
of him," said Ha’apu firmly.

“You could fake the ruined
outrigger,” persisted Poplar.

“To what end?”

“I don’t- know!” He was
irritated at his irrational terror.
Goddamnit, man, it probably
doesn’t exist! And if it, by some
incredible chance, did, it was only
another fish.

“Maybe you want to attract
those tourists you profess to dislike.
Or want to try and wangle some
free diving equipment. Or simply
want to draw some attention to
yourself. Who knows? But I can’t
take that chance.” He took another
look at the tooth. “You know I
can’t, damn you. Where are you
staying while you’re on Tutuila?”

“With friends.”

“Okay, we have a couple of
cruisers here at the station. They’re
not in use just now. Down at the
very end of Pier Three. The one
we’ll use is called the Vatia. You
can’t mistake it. The other, the

Aku-Aku, is longer and has a flying
bridge. Meet me at, oh, ten
tomorrow morning, on the pier. If
you get there ahead of me, tie your
boat to the stern.” He stopped
turning the tooth over and over,
feigned unconcern. Inside, he was
quivering with tension.

“May I keep this?” He knew
what he was asking. Did the chief?

“There is another still set in the
paopao. Yes, you may have this
one. For your children, to remind
them of when you were young.”

“I have no children. I’m not
married, Ha’apu.”

“That is sad. The other tooth
must remain with us. It will not ...”
he said, in reply to the unposed
question, “ ... ever be for sale.”

Poplar was seeing his name
blazoned across the cover and title
page of every scientific journal in
the world. Below the name, a
picture of himself holding the
largest tooth of Carcharodon mega-
lodon ever found. He might even
manage to include Ha’apu in the
picture.

He leaned over the desk, began
shuffling papers.

“Good-by ‘till tomorrow, then,
Matai Ha’apu.”

“Tofa, Sea-Doctor Poplar.”
The chief gathered up his
wrappings and left quietly.

He began going over the
supplies they’d need in addition to
what was standard stock on board

the Vatai. Plan on being gone at
least a week, maybe two. Get him
out of the office, at least.

Elaine walked in, strolled over
to the desk and leaned across it.
That finished any attempt at
paperwork. When she noticed the
tooth in front on him, she almost
swallowed her gum.

“My God, what’s that?”

“You’re a master’s candidate in
marine bio. You tell me.” He
handed it to her.

She examined it closely, and
those pixie eyes got wider and
wider.

“Some gag. It looks like a Great
White’s tooth. But that’s absurd.”

“So was the coelacanth when it
turned up in 1938,” he replied
evenly.

“But it can't be Carcharodon!”
she protested. “It’s three times too
big!”

“For Carcharodon carcharias,
yes. Not for Carcharodon mega-
lodon.” He turned and dug into the
loosely stacked books that in-
habited the space between desk
chair and wall. In a teacher-student
situation, he was perfectly comfort-
able with her.

“You mean the Great White’s
ancestor? Well, maybe.” She took
another look at the unreal weapon
in her hand. “I recall one found in
Georgia about half this size. And
there was a six-incher turned up
just a few years ago. Extrapolating

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

from what we know about the
modern Great White, carcharias,
that would mean this tooth came
out of a shark ninety fee....”

“Ah-ah,” he warned.

“Oh, all right. About, um, 30
meters long.” She didn’t smile.
“Kind of hard to imagine.”

“So are sharks attacking boats.
But there are dozens of verified
incidents of sharks, often Great
Whites, hitting small craft. Hap-
pens off stateside waters as well as
in the tropics. The White Death.
The basis for a real Moby Dick,
only ten times worse. Not to
mention a few thousand years of
sea serpent stories.”

“You think one of these might
have survived into recent times?”

Poplar was thumbing through a
thick tome. “That’s what that chief
thinks, only to him it’s a god and
not a shark. The Great White
prefers ocean-going mammals to
fish. Probably this oversized
ancestor of his fed on the earlier,
slower moving whales. First the
whales grew more streamlined, and
then man began picking off the
slower ones. The sea couldn’t have
supported too many of these
monsters anyway. A megalodon
would have a killer whale for
breakfast.”

“A man-eater as big as a blue
whale.” She shook her lovely head.
“A diver’s nightmare.”

“The Matai who brought this

one in says he knows where there’s
another, and maybe more.”

“Far out. You think I might get
my thesis out of this?”

“Well,” he smiled, “the chief
did say that according to legend
anyone who sees Him is forever
changed. All you’ve got to do is spot
Him.”

“Very funny.”

“We leave first thing tomorrow
morning, on the Vatai. Tenish.
Now go and pack.” But she was
already out the door.

She was not so happy for the
reasons Poplar thought.

Tourists waved from the hotel
Balcony. It had been built at the
point where the open sea met Pago
Pago’s magnificent harbor. Elaine
slid her lava-lava down a little lower
on one shoulder and waved back
coquettishly. Poplar looked up
from the wheel disapprovingly.

“Just because naked native
maidens went out of fashion forty
years ago is no reason for you to feel
any obligation to revive the
tradition for the benefit of
overweight used-car salesmen from
Des Moines.”

“Oh, foo! For what they charge
the poor slobs to stay in that
concrete doghouse they’re entitled
to a little wish-fulfillment.”

“Courtesy of downtown Brook-
lyn, hmm,” he grinned in spite of
himself. He swung the wheel hard

over and they headed south-south-
west. The powerful twin diesels
purred evenly below deck.

Wreathed in gold-gray clouds,
Mt. Rainmaker, all 530 meters of
it, watched them from astern long
after Tutuila itself had vanished
into the sea.

The trip was uneventful, except
that Elaine insisted on sleeping
stark naked. She also had what
Poplar felt was a childish habit of
kicking her sheets down to her feet.
He considered going over and
replacing them, but hesitated. He
might wake her and that would be
awkward.

Ha’apu was clearly pleased at
the situation, and there wasn’t
anything Poplar could do about it.
Well, if she wanted to expose
herself, he’d simply ignore her.
Clearly she was looking for
attention, and he didn’t intend to
give it to her.

So until he fell asleep, he spent
a lot of time staring at the sterile
cabin wall that separated him from
the sea.

And the other wall remained
equally unbroken.

Like most small, low lying
Pacific islands, Tafahi was non-
existent one moment and a
destination the next, popping out of
the blue ocean like a cork. The
white sand beach sparkled in
evening sun, devoid of the usual

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

ornaments of civilization ... beer
cans, dog-eared sandals, plastic
wrappers, empty candy papers,
beer, cans.

There was a broad, clear
entrance to the small lagoon.
Poplar had no trouble bringing the
Vatai inside. Ha’apu climbed into
his paopao, its little sail tightly
furled, and paddled ashore. Poplar
and Elaine followed in the Vatai’ s
powerful little runabout.

“We’re not here just to look for
teeth, Elaine,’’ he said abruptly.
She stared at him expectantly.

“Ha’apu really thinks ... I know
it sounds absurd ... that this
monster is still swimming around
somewhere to the east of here.
Supposedly it’s taken two fisher-
men along with the front half of
their boat. Probably a cleverly
faked fraud the villagers have made
up, for what purpose I don’t know
yet. Commmercial, probably.”

“I see,” she replied easily. “BE
careful you don’t run over any of
the local craft when we hit the
beach.”

For all the surprise she’d shown
you might have thought they were
here for an evening feast and a
casual swim in the little lagoon.

They were on the best of terms
with the islanders right from the
start. Poplar had rammed the
runabout into a beached paopao,
spilling them both into the shallow
water. Being men of the sea, the

villagers thus felt the same sort of
sympathy for Poplar that they’d
have given any idiot.

When Ha’apu had finally
managed to separate himself from
his immediate family ... and Poplar
and Elaine had dried out a little ...
the Matai beckoned them inland.

“The remains of the dugout are
in front of my fale. Doctor.”

Tafahi was far from being a
major island, but it was large
enough to support a fair popula-
tion. A television-FM antenna
poked its scarecrow shape above
the tallest coconut palm. It jutted
from an extra-large fale that served
as combination school, church, and
town hall.

If the damage to the outrigger
had been faked, it was the product
of experts. Poplar knelt, ran his
hands over the torn edges of the
opened hull. Great triangular
gashes, each larger than his fist,
showed clearly around the shredded
edges. Apparently it had been hit ...
or the hit had been faked to
indicate ... an attack from an angle
slightly to port.

“The first tooth was in here ...”
Ha’apu knelt beside Poplar to
indicate a narrowing hole in the
bottom of the craft. “... and the
other, here.” He pointed, and
Poplar saw the other tooth, as large
as the one back in his office, still
embedded in the side of the
outrigger.

“He lost them, as Niuhi and his
cousins often do when they attack
hard objects,” commented Ha’apu
in a helpful tone.

“Yeah,” agreed Poplar, ab-
sorbed in his examination. “Always
carries plently in reserve, though. I
wouldn’t think his ancestor would
be any exception.” He squinted up
at the sinking sun. It had begun the
spectacular light-show sunset that
was an every evening occurrence in
the South Seas.

“It’s getting late. No point in
hurrying to reach that ■reef tonight.
About two hours to get there, you
said?”

Ha’apu nodded. “In your boat,
yes.”

Poplar was a bit surprised. Now
was the time that Matai should
have begun his excuses, his
hedging. He stood, brushed sand
from his pants. “Then if you can
put us up. I’d just as soon spend the
night here. We’ve been doing
enough shipboard sleeping and
we’ll be doing more.”

“I agree!” said Elaine, rather
more loudly than was necessary.

The Matai nodded. “Of course
there will be a fale for you.”

“With two mats,” Poplar
added.

“Why should it be otherwise.
Doctor Poplar?” agreed Ha’apu. If
the old chief was being sarcastic, he
covered it well. But as he walked
away, muttering in Samoan, he was

shaking his head slowly.

It wasn’t the strange surround-
ings, nor the hard floor beneath the
mat of woven tapa cloth that made
Poplar’s sleep uneasy. He’d enjoyed
some of the deepest sleeps of his life
in similar situations. And when he
was awakened about midnight by a
sudden bumping, he drew a
startled breath. His dreams had
been full of dark arrow-shapes with
mouths like black pits. But it was
only Elaine. She’d rolled over in her
sleep and was resting against his
shoulder, breathing softly. Courte-
ously, he didn’t push her away, but
it made it harder for him to get
back to sleep, which displeased
him.

When he awoke the next
morning he was covered with sweat.

“This may not be the exact
spot, but it is very close,” breathed
Ha’apu. “I know by the trees.”

Since the single minuscule
“island” harbored barely six or
seven small palms, with but two of
decent size. Poplar felt confident
the old chief had found the spot he
wanted.

They’d anchored in the lee of
thfe atoll. It was small enough so
that you could see the surf booming
against the coral on the far side.

Poplar kept an eye on Ha’apu
while he helped Elaine into her
scuba gear. Still no sign of an
attempt to keep him from diving.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

He thought the hoax was beginning
to go a little far.

The tanks they’d brought were
the latest models. They’d have an
hour on the bottom with plenty of
safe time. Elaine checked his
regulator, she checked his. They
each took up a shark stick, but
Poplar gave his to Elaine. He
wanted both hands for his camera,
and she could handle anything
likely to bother them.

There was a diver’s platform set
just below the waterline at the stern
of the Vatai. Elaine jumped in with
a playful splash. He followed more
slowly, handling the expensive
camera with care.

Both wore only the upper half of
a heat-retaining wetsuit. The ocean
flowing around his bare legs told
him it was a good thing he had. It
wasn’t cold, but cooler water
flowing from the depths of the
oceanic trench obviously found its
way up here. The thermocline
would rise nearer the surface. That
would permit deep-sea dwellers to
rise closer to the top. Still, it was
comfortable and refreshing after
the trip on the boat.

Ha’apu watched them descend,
and thought.

The water inside the lagoon
would be clear as quartz. Even out
here, visibility was excellent in all
directions.

The underwater world held as
much fascination for him now as it

had on his first dive, years ago.
Much of the mystery was gone, but
the beauty of his refuge was
ever-present.

For the first few minutes, as
they swam parallel to the reef, he
couldn’t stop himself from turning
to look anxiously in all directions.
He gave up that nonsense after five
minutes. Nothing more impressive
than a fair-sized grouper had
trundled clumsily across their path.
His shark prod now dangled lazily
from his belt.

They stopped often for pictures.
Even if this were only a pleasure
jaunt, it would be nice to bring
back something to justify the
expenditure and time.

They returned to the Vatai ten
minutes early. Poplar was feeling
hungry and a little discouraged.
The tiny reef had been exceptional
in its mediocrity. He’d seen
hundreds of identical spots during
his trips throughout the Pacific and
the Caribbean. And he didn’t feel
like staying another five or six days.

In sum, he was being took. If
Ha’apu’s plan was to use the two
teeth to get a free estimate of the
fishing grounds (probably been in
the village for years, he thought), it
was working admirably. Poplar was
definitely being took.

“Did you see anything?” asked
Ha’apu politely as he helped Elaine
doff her tanks.

“I got a couple of shots of a

pretty good-sized moray. Other-
wise, Ha’apu, there’s more sea life
to be found outside the harbor at
Pago Pago or Apia.”

“He has frightened them all
away,” commented the chief
knowingly. “Perhaps you will have
better luck on your next dive.”

“Sure,” replied Poplar dryly,
helping himself to a glass of tea.

By the third day, the attractions
of the un-unusual reef had long
since paled for Poplar. Even the
attraction of swimming through the
brilliantly lit water was beginning
to seem like work again. Elaine
seemed to thrive on it, but, then,
there was still something in every
crevice to delight her. But he’d seen
enough angel fish, brain coral,
giant mollusks, trumpet fish, et
cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, to
last him another year. And nothing
he couldn’t see with much less
trouble right in the station’s
backyard.

In fact, except for a peaceful
encounter with a poisonous stone-
fish, the last three days had been
about as exciting as a dive in one of
Pago Pago’s hotel pools.

“Possibly He will come this
afternoon,” said Ha’*pu.

“I know, I know,” Poplar
replied irritably. It was just about
time to tell the old chief off, find
out what he wanted, and return
home.

In the many-times three dives,
they’d sighted exactly three sharks.
Two small blues and one pelagic
white-tip ... a seven-footer ... that
had turned and run for the open
sea even before Poplar could set his
camera for a decent shot. To him
they were just three more fish.

They’d go home tomorrow.
True, he’d sort of promised the
Matai a week. But the longer he
stayed away from the office, the
more work would be piled up for
his return. Although he’d left the
pressures of extreme paperwork
back in the states and settled into
the more agreeable Samoan mode,
old habits died hard. As director,
he still had certain responsibilities.

He was drifting along just above
the sea bottom about half a mile
from the boat. His camera had
lined on a gorgeous blacTc and
yellow sea worm, flowerlike body
fully extended. It was the first really
unusual thing he’d seen since
they’d arrived. A perfect picture ...
his light meter shrank by half.

Damn and hell, that was the
last straw! Poplar whirled angrily,
expecting to see a playful Elaine
floating just above and behind him.
He’d warned her at least half a
dozen times to stay out of the light
when he was taking pictures. She’d
seemed to think it was fun.

But something else had swal-
lowed the sun.

For a second Poplar ... training,

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

degrees, and experience notwith-
standing ... stopped thinking. He
went back to his childhood. When
he’d lain in bed at night, the covers
up around his chin, staring at
where his clothes lay draped over
the back of his chair. You wouldn’t
know the kind of terrifying shapes
clothes and chair and night can
combine to make in a child’s mind.
Fear squeezed his spine and his
heart pumped madly.

Above him, Carcharodon mega-
lodon glided majestically through
the clear water, its seemingly
unending tail beating hypnotically
from side to side, the great pectoral
fins cutting the current like
hydrofoils.

He turned, saw Elaine drifting
alongside. He tugged at her arm.
She ignored it. He tugged harder.
As though in a dream, she turned
to face him. He pointed in the
direction of the boat. She nodded,
sluggishly following him, half
swimming, half towed. A line from
Cousteau ran through his mind,
and he tried desperately to swim
faster.

“Sharks can instinctively sense
when a fish or animal is in
trouble.’’

She shook free from him,
nodded at his concerned gaze, and
began swimming steadily on her
own.

For a while the monster seemed
not to notice them. It swam slightly

ahead, moving effortlessly. A single
gigantic stretch of cartilage, tooth,
sinew, and muscle. Poplar stared at
it and knew that what Ha’apu had
said was true. This was more than a
fish, more than a shark. You could
feel it in yourself and in the water.

Lazily, it banked like a great
bird and came at them.

He turned frantically, gestured
to Elaine. The shark was between
them and the boat. Trying to
outswim it would be like trying to
outrun lightning. He’d spotted a
long crack in the battlements of the
reef. Usually such breaks harbored
morays, powerful clams, and
poisoners like the stonefish. Right
now they seemed like the best of
friends, harmless as puppies.

There was no subtlety, no
attempt to deceive, in their retreat.
They swam like hell.

Maybe He was disinterested in
such small prey. Whatever the
reason, His pursuit remained
leisurely. They attained the safety
of the rift. Wedged back in the
deep, wide crevice, they still had
room to swim freely.

He came straight at them,
Poplar had to fight down the urge
to scrape frantically at the coral
behind him. For the moment, he
was afraid the monster would trj
to bite them out, coral and all. II
looked big enough to take half the
atoll in one gulp.

At the last moment. He swerved

to His right. There was a brief
glimpse of a half-open mouth, a
cavern big enough to swallow a
truck. It was lined with multiple
rows of 18-centimeter-long teeth. A
wide black eye passed, pure
malignancy floating in a pool of
red-hot venom. Then there was a
long, endless wall of iron-gray flesh
rough as sandpaper ... darker than
the skin of a Great White, some
part of him noted ... and it was
past.

He floated. Elaine prodded him
and he could see the terror behind
her mask. He wondered if he
looked as bad. The great bulk had
circled and was beginning a slow
patrol of the reef. Not that it was
smart enough to consider bottling
them up. Clearly it liked the area.

Anyhow, they were stuck.

If the rift had been a chimney,
open all the way to the surface, they
could have swum upward. Despite
the battering of the light surf,
they’d have been safer on the reefs
jagged top than in the water with
Him. But it was closed overhead.
To reach the surface, they would
have to leave their small fortress.

Minutes passed. They looked at
each other without seeing. Each
was wholely absorbed in personal
thoughts. They’d encountered a
terror whose psychological effect
was even more overwhelming than
its reality. It did not belong to the
world of men, this perfect.

unmatched killing machine. How
puny man seemed, how feeble his
invented efforts at destruction.

How frightened he was.

He looked down at his watch.
At the rate they were using air, in a
few minutes they’d be down to their
emergency supply. Elaine prodded,
moved her hands in diver’s argot.
He remained frozen. She grabbed
him by the shoulders and shook
him. But there was no way he could
tell her in sign language of this new
problem.

Woodruth “Woody” Poplar
was a coward. A physical and moral
coward. He knew it, buried it
beneath work and joking.

Elaine started tugging at her
own tanks. It unfroze him. He
grabbed her arms, held them at her
side until she finally nodded slowly,
calmed.

It took every ounce of courage
he possessed to look outside that
cranny. He blinked, drifted out
further. He had disappeared.
Poplar glanced in all directions.
Nothing.

He beckoned to Elaine. Care-
fully he made his intentions clear.
Megalodon, being as stupid as any
modern shark, had doubtlessly
drifted off in search of prey that
behaved like such and didn’t melt
into hard, unappetizing coral.

Poplar armed his shark stick ...
a terribly futile-seeming gesture.
Elaine did likewise. He had to try

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

twice with his shaking hands before
he got the shell armetl. The
monster was a good 30 meters long
and must weigh more tons than
Poplar cared to think about. The
shark stick might tickle Him. But it
was comforting to hold in the crook
of one arm.

He pushed away first and they
headed for the Vatai. Moving fast,
they hugged the reef as tightly as
they could. He let her get a little
ahead, as arranged. That way
they’d make less of a blur against
the reef. The smaller shapes would
be harder for the shark’s poor
eyesight to detect against the dark
coral.

As they rose gradually towards
the surface, leaving the protection
of the reef wall, he tried to watch
five, directions at once. Inside he
was oddly calm. What an animal!
Nearly a hundred feet of sheer
grace and power.

He missed a stroke. Hell, he’d
forgotten to take a single picture!
Not one lousy shot! All he had by
way of proof was the corroborative
statement of Elaine ... worth
nothing in such august publica-
tions as the Journal of Marine
Biology ... and a couple of teeth
that they’d treat as he first had. He
would have cried, but it would have
ruined his vision.

The curved bottom of the Vatai
became visible just ahead and
above, its anchor cable hardly

moving in the calm sea. The
platform occasionally broke the
surface. He looked regretfully down
at his camera.

An unmistakable shape, a
slate-gray torpedo, was coming up
fast behind them. This time it
wasn’t a lazy chase. The attack was
as sharply defined as death.
Sunlight flashed on teeth that could
snap through steel plate.

They swam for their lives. Panic
filled him, terror made jelly of his
muscles. Only adrenalin pushed
him through the clean glass water.

They weren’t going to make it.
He wasn’t a fish. He was the devil
himself, Beelzebub, all the things
that go bump in the night, the
terrors of childhood and of little
boy darkness.

Elaine was falling behind. He
slowed.

Goddamnit, it was only a fish.

He turned and waited. Elaine
paused only to give him a stricken
look in passing and then was gone.
Perfectly calm, he was. Relaxed
and peaceful in the cool water.
Inside, his one major concern was
that no one would be able to record
this for the Journal. Pity. Then
there was no sea bottom, no reef, no
sunlight. Only He and me, thought
Poplar.

He kicked with every bit of
energy in his legs, exploding to his
right. He had a brief glimpse of an
obscene eye as big as a saucer, a

black gullet as deep as a well. It
touched him. Consciousness de-
parted as he jabbed with the shark
stick.

He doubted, along with the best
Biblical referents, that the sky in
heaven was blue. But he wasn’t
going to argue. There was a
constriction, a tightness in his
throat, that wasn’t caused by fear.
Elaine was hugging him and crying.
It felt like he’d swallowed a cork.

“For Christ’s sake let me get
some air!” he finally managed to
croak. She backed off.

“Damn you, damn you. You
scared- the hell out of me, you
insensitive, you ...I” She sniffled.
Her hair was wet and stringy and
she was totally beautiful. “I ran
away and left you.” The crying
broke out again in full force, and
she fell onto his chest, sobbing.

“I’m sorry, I apologize for my
inconsiderateness. Tell you what.
I’ll marry you. Will that make up
for it?” He rolled over, felt the
softness of the mat they’d slipped
under him. Someone had removed
his tanks and mask.

She pulled away, stared at him
in stunned silence. For some
reason, this started her crying all
over again. They’d removed his
fins, too. He wiggled his toes.

Only one set moved.

He sat up slowly and looked
down at himself. His right foot
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bandages and dried blood. His
voice was so even it shocked him.

“What happened?” he asked
the old Matai, who had been
watching him carefully. He was
aware the question lacked bril-
liance, but at the moment he didn’t
feel very witty.

“He did not take you, Sea-
Doctor Poplar. Perhaps so close to
the surface, the sun blinded it at
the last moment. Perhaps He lost
you against the bottom of the
boat.”

“You don’t believe any of that,”
said Poplar accusingly. He searched
for pain but there wasn’t any.
Someone had made use of the

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Vatai's medical kit.

“No, Doctor Poplar, not really.
Tangaroa knows why.”

Poplar thought of something,
started laughing. Elaine looked at
him in alarm, but he quickly
reassured her.

“No, I’m still sane, I think,
‘Laine. It just occurred to me that I
can’t go stalking around the office
like Ahab himself, with only a lousy
foot taken. What a cruddy break.”

“Don’t joke about it,” she
blubbered, then managed a weak
smile. “It will ruin your rhythm at
the wedding.”

He laughed, too, then slammed
a fist against the deck. “We’re
going back to Tutuila. I’m going to
get a ship from the Navy base,
somehow, and harpoons. We’ll
come back here and ....”

“Poplar,” began Ha’apu quiet-
ly, “no one will believe you. Your
Navy people will laugh at you and
make jokes.”

“Well, then I’ll get the funds to
hire a bigger ship, someway. One
big enough to haul that thing back
on. My god, one day I’ll see it
stuffed and mounted in the
Smithsonian!”

“They’ll have to build a special
wing,” Elaine grinned tightly.

“Yeah. And don’t you go
putting out any fishing lines on the
way back, you hear? I don’t want to
lose you on the trip in.”

“How about after we get

back?” she replied, staring at him.

He looked at her evenly. “Not
then, either. Not ever. Hey, you
know something? I’m famished.”

“You’ve been unconscious for
five hours,” she told him. “I’ll fix
you something.” She rose, moved
belowdecks.

“And now you are as E Doctor
for you have gazed upon Him. He
has changed you, and you are no
longer yourself as before, and He
has taken a piece of your soul.”

“Listen, Ha’apu, I don’t want to
offend you by attacking your
religion, but that was just a fish,
that’s all. A monstrous big fish, but
no more. I’m the same sea-doctor,
and you’re the same Matai, and
we’re just lucky all I lost was a few
toes and such. Understand?”

“Of course. Doctor Poplar.”
Ha’apu turned, went up to the
bridge.

Changed indeed! He crawled
over to the low railing near the
stern, looked down into the waters.
Small fish swam down there,
magnified and distorted by the sea.
He shivered just a little.

He would have married Elaine
anyway, of course. And if she’d
been threatened by anything, he’d
have stepped in to defend her,
wouldn’t he? Ha’apu fired the
engines and the Vatai started to
move.

Well, wouldn’t he?

Maybe He knew.

PERIPHERALIA

I don’t believe this. I really
don’t. What looks like hundreds of
science fiction and fantasy films in
the making, and yet another month
without anything new and/or major
to review. What is so sad as a
reviewer without anything to
review? A critic with a column to
fill and nothing to fill it with?

So again a column of bits and
pieces, a pedestal here, a capital
there (joke).

I do have one new thing to talk
about, but almost hesitate to
mention it for fear that the reader
will drop the magazine and run
screaming from the room. But let’s
chance it. Space 1999 (steady —
this won’t take long) is off reruns in
my area, and today we got a new
episode. At least I think it’s new. It
looked new. But somehow the
gobbledy gook was familiar.

Our gang, the Alphans, run into
an (unexplained) time warp and
way out there some where (“We
aren’t where we supposed to be!”
says Barry Morse. “Where the hell
is that?” I answered politely), run
into an (unexplained) alternate
Earth. Because this is an (unex-
plained) simultaneous time warp,
by golly, our Alphans have already
settled the place five years ago.

Alan, Koenig, and Helena

BAIRD SEARLES

Films

descend to the surface. The
duplicates of the first two have been
conveniently killed earlier, but
Helena’s double is there and to
complicate matters, had married
the other Koenig before he died. It
could at least have been a poignant
dramatic situation, but it was
solved in time-honored Space 1999
fashion by having the widow
Helena kiss (our) Koenig and then
drop dead (unexplained).

Then the two moons run into
each other for unexplained reasons
and the Alphans are back where
they should be (unexplained),
where ever the hell that is.

I just wanted to be sure you
were kept up on events on Alpha.
And to show those poor folks who
don’t get the show in their area
what they’re missing.

Now a real bit of peripheralia. I
would assume that most readers
saw the “special report” some
months back on science fiction
books and films in Newsweek. It
was, of course, infuriatingly snide
and condescending. Being one of
those interviewed for the piece (but
not, thank God, quoted), I know
that it was well and intelligently
researched, so the responsibility for
the tone must fall on the writer,
Peter Prescott. This is certainly not
the place to do a rebuttal, but I did
want to add a footnote which might
be new to most of you.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Anyone who wrote a negative
letter about the article received the
following reply, and I quote in full:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED TO
KNOW THAT AS OF 2300 GMT
1/12/76, IN CONSEQUENCE OF
CERTAIN IRRESPONSIBLE STATE-
MENTS PUBLISHED IN THE
12/22/75 ISSUE OF NEWSWEEK,
TERRAN MORTAL PETER PRES-
COTT HAS BEEN PLACED ON
PROBATION BY THE INTER-
GALACTIC COUNCIL. SHOULD
THE SUBJECT PROVE RESISTANT
TO STANDARD REHABILITATION
AND RECONDITIONING TECH-
NIQUES, THE COUNCIL WILL
SUBMIT A REFERENDUM ON
LIQUIDATION AND RECYCLING.
IN THAT EVENT, YOUR LETTER
WILL BE TALLIED AMONG THE
AFFIRMATIVE VOTES.

MEANWHILE, WE HAVE BEEN
ASKED TO EXTEND THE COUN-
CIL’S APOLOGIES AND BEST
WISHES.

SINCERELY,

MADELEINE EDMONDSON
FOR THE EDITORS

Now, isn’t that a really intelli-
gent answer to an intelligent
objection to Newsweek’s attitude?
Somehow, that made me angrier
than the original piece. My only

FILMS

comfort is that they must have had
a powerful lot of negative mail to go
to the trouble of composing and
running off an answer in multiple.

Just a random thought. I’m a
bit amused at those writers who
make a public production of how
distasteful they find it to be
associated with science fiction and
“ghettoized” as s/f writers, but
somehow manage to turn up as
(paid) guests at Star Trek conven-
tions, of all things. I’m certainly not
against writers picking up some
extra cash or the ego boost from
adulatory convention-going fans
(being as how all they usually see
are their unadulatory typewriters),
but whatever happened to convic-
tion’s courage?

Late, late show dept.... Caught
The Incredible Shrinking Man and
The Power recently, both films too
old to have been covered by this
column. I’d like some day to do a
full column on TISM; every time I
see it, I realize how much it
deserves its reputation, and more.
Particularly the last five minutes, at
the wire screen, with the beautifully
written monologue underneath.
The Power, on only a second seeing,
I think is underrated, at least by
me. The vagueness of the concept
still bothered me, but it is one of
those rare s/f films that has a really
strong cast.

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Things - to - come - dept.... The
Pink Floyd reportedly signed to do
the music for Dune. Now I admire
it (them?) immensely, and one of
their (its?) concerts at the Fillmore
was one of the transcendental
experiences of my life, but I see
little connection between their work
til now, and Dune as I remember
reading it. I’m afraid it’s just
another example of a producer
trying desperately to be hip.

Unlikely - look - alikes - dept....
Anybody besides me notice how
much the TV Guide cover for the
first week of last Feb. (for
S.W.A.T.) looked like an Analog
cover?

An involving and thoughtful story about a society that has developed
androids that are almost too-human. As a “new minority, " the
androids would be the first suspected of any wrongdoing, except that
they could not kill. ..or could they?

A Crowd Of Shadows

by C. L. GRANT

Of all the means of relaxation
that I have devised for myself over
the years, most required nothing
more strenuous than driving an
automobile, and not one of them
had anything remotely to do with
murder. Yet there it was, and now
here I am — alone, though not
always lonely, and wondering,
though not always puzzled. I’m
neither in jail nor exile, asylum nor
hospital. Starburst is where I am
and, unless I can straighten a few
things out, Starburst is where I’m
probably going to stay.

I had long ago come to the
conclusion that every so often the
world simply had to thumb its nose
at me and wink obscenely as if it
knew what the hell was making
things tick and for spite wasn’t
about to let me in on the secret.
When that happens, I succumb to
the lure of Huck Finn’s advice and
light out for the territory: in my
case, that turns out to be Starburst.

Where the luncheonette is called
The Luncheonette, the hotel is The
Hotel, and so on in understated
simplicity. Where the buildings, all
of them, rise genteely from
well-kept lawns on full-acre lots,
painted sunrise-new and no two the
same shape or shade — a half
moon-fashioned community that
prides itself on its seclusion and its
ability to sponge out the world from
transients like me. It’s a place that
not many can stand for too long,
but it’s a breather from every law
that anyone ever thought of.

At least that’s what I thought
when I came down last May.

It was a bit warm for the
season, but not at all uncomfort-
able. Wednesday, and I was sitting
on the grey sand beach that
ribboned the virtually waveless bay
they had christened Nova. The sun
was pleasantly hot, the water cool,
and the barest sign of a breeze
drifted down from the misted

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

mountains that enclosed the town.
I had just dried myself off and was
about to roll over onto my stomach
to burn a little when a thin and
angular boy about fifteen or so
dashed in front of me, kicking up
crests of sand and inadvertently
coating me and my blanket as he
pursued some invisible swift
quarry. I was going to protest when
there was a sudden shout and he
stumbled to a halt, turning around
immediately, his arms dejectedly
limp at his sides. Curious, I
followed his gaze past me to a
middle-aged couple huddled and
bundled under a drab beach
umbrella. The woman, hidden by
bonnet, dark glasses and a black,
long-sleeved sweater, beckoned
sharply. The boy waved in return
and retraced his steps at a
decidedly slower pace. As he passed
me, looking neither left nor right, I
only just happened to notice the
tiny and blurred sequence of digits
tattooed on the inside of his left
forearm .

I’m sure my mouth must have
opened in the classic gesture of
surprise, but though I’ve seen them
often enough in the city, for some
reason I didn’t expect to see an
android in Starburst.

I continued to stare rather
rudely until the boy reached the
couple and flopped face-down on
the sand beside them, his lightly
tanned skin pale against the grey.

The beach was quietly deserted,
and the woman’s voice carried
quite easily. Though her words
were indistinct, her tone was not:
boy or android, the lad was in
trouble. I supposed he was being
told to stay close, paying for his
minor act of rebellion.

I smiled to myself and lay back
with my cupped hands serving as a
pillow. Poor kid, I thought, all he
wanted was a little fun. And then I
had to smile at myself for thinking
the boy human. It was a common
mistake, though one I usually don’t
make, and I forgot about it soon
enough as I dozed. And probably
would never have thought of it
again if I hadn’t decided to indulge
myself in a little fancy dining that
evening.

Though my stays are irregular,
they have been frequent enough to
educate the hotel staff to my
unexciting habits, and I had little
difficulty in reserving my favorite
table: a single affair by the dining
room window overlooking the park,
overlooking, in point of fact, most
of the town since the hotel was the
only structure in Starburst taller
than two stories, and it was only
six. The unadorned walls of the
circular room were midnight-green
starred with white, a most relaxing,
even seductive combination, and its
patrons were always suitably
subdued. I was just getting into my
dessert when I noticed the boy from

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

the beach enter with the couple 1
had assumed were his parents.
They huddled with the maitre d’
and were escorted to a table
adjacent to my own. The boy was
exceptionally polite, holding the
chair for mother, shaking hands
with father before sitting down
himself. When he happened to
glance my way, I smiled and
nodded, but the gesture quickly
turned to a frown when I heard
someone mutter, “Goddamned
humie.”

The threesome were apparently
ignoring the remark, but I was
annoyed enough to scan the
neighboring tables. Nothing. I was
going to shrug it off to bad manners
when suddenly an elderly man and
his wife brusquely pushed back
their chairs and left without any
pretense of politeness. As they
threaded between me and the boy,
the old man hissed “robie” just
loud enough. Perhaps I should
have said something in return, or
made overtures, gestures, some-
thing of an apology to the boy. But
I didn’t. Not a thing.

Instead, I ordered a large
brandy and turned to watch the
darkness outside the uncurtained
window. And in the reflection of
the room, I saw the boy glaring at
his empty plate.

In spite of the ground that fact
and fiction have covered in
exploring the myriad possibilities of

societies integrated with the some-
times too-human android, the
reality seemed to have come as a
surprise to most people. For some
it was a pleasant one: androids
were androids; pleasant com-
pany, tireless workers, expensive
but economical. Their uses were
legion, and their confusion with
actual humans minimal. For
others, however, and predictably,
androids were androids: abomina-
tions, blasphemies, monsters and
all the horrid rest of it.

They had become, in fact, the
newest minority that nearly every-
one could look down upon if they
were close-minded enough. Ergo,
the tattoos and serial numbers. For
people not sensitive enough to
detect the subtle differences, the
markings served as some sort of
self-gratifying justification, though
for what I’ve never been able to
figure out exactly. I have a friend in
London who has replaced all his
servants with androids and has
come to love them almost as
brothers and sisters. Then, too,
there’s another friend who speaks
of them as he would of his pets.

It’s true they haven’t brought
about the Utopia dreamed of in
centuries past; they are strictly
regulated in the business commun-
ity — always clannish, job
preference still goes to the human,
no matter how much more efficient
the simulacrum might be. Still and

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

all, I thought as I emptied my glass
and rose to leave, there’s something
to be said for them: at least they
have unfailing manners.

So I smiled as graciously as I
could as I passed their table. The
boy smiled back, the parents
beamed. The lad was obviously
their surrogate son, and I was
slightly saddened and sorry for
them.

I spent the rest of the evening
closeted in my room, alternately
reading and speculating on the
reasons for their choice. Death,
perhaps, or a runaway: as I said,
the androids’ uses are legion. It
puzzled me, however, why the
parents hadn’t kept the boy covered
on the beach . It would have at least
avoided the scene in the dining
room. Then I told myself to mind
my own stupid business, and for
the last time I slept the sleep of the
just.

The following morning my door
was discreetly knocked upon, and 1
found myself being introduced to
the local detective-in-chief by Ernie
Wills, the manager. I invited them
in and sat myself on the edge of the
still-unmade bed. “So. What can I
do for you, Mr. Harrington?’’

The policeman was a portly,
pale-faced man with a hawk nose
and unpleasantly dark eyes.
Somehow he managed to chew
tobacco throughout the entire
interview without once looking for a

place to spit. I liked the man
immediately.

“Did you know the Carruthers
family very well?” His voice
matched his size, and I was hard
put not to wince.

I looked blank. “Carruthers? I
don’t know them at all. Who are
they?”

Harrington just managed a
frown. “The couple sitting next to
you last night at dinner. The boy. I
was under the impression that you
knew them.”

“Not hardly,” 1 said. “I saw
them once on the beach yesterday
afternoon, and again at dinner.” I
spread my hands. “That’s all.”

“Some of the other guests said
you were rather friendly to them.”

By that time I was completely
puzzled and looked to Ernie for
some assistance, but he only
shrugged and tipped his head in
Harrington’s direction. It’s his
show, the gesture said. And for the
first time, I noticed how harassed
he seemed.

“In a detective novel,” I said as
lightly as I could, “the hero usually
says, ‘You have me at a
disadvantage.’ Tm sorry, Mr.
Harrington, but I haven’t the
faintest idea what in God’s name
you’re talking about.”

Harrington grinned. His teeth
were stained. “Touche. And I
apologize, okay? I didn’t mean to
be so damned mysterious, but

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

sometimes I like to play the role. I
read those books too.” He settled
himself more deeply into the only
armchair in the room and reached
into a coat pocket for a
handkerchief which he used to wipe
his hands. “You see, there’s been a
murder in the hotel.”

I looked at him patiently, but
he didn’t say anything else,
apparently waiting for my reaction.
I almost said, so what? but I didn’t.
“Am I supposed to guess who was
murdered, or who did it? My God,
it wasn’t one of the Carruthers’,
was it?”

Harrington shook his head.

Ernie swallowed hard.

“Well, surely you don’t suspect
one of them?”

“Wish 1 knew,” Harrington
said. “An old man was found
outside his door on the third floor
about three o’clock this morning.
His throat was, well, not exactly
torn ... more like yanked out. Like
somebody just grabbed hold and
pulled.”

That I understood, and the
unbidden image that flashed into
my mind was enough to swear me
off breakfast, and probably lunch.
I shuddered.

"Some people,” the detective
continued, “said they heard this
old guy call the boy ‘robie.’ Did you
hear it?”

“Yes,” I answered without
thinking. “And I heard someone

else, I don’t know who, call him a
‘humie.’ There were other remarks,

I guess, but I didn’t hear them all.
That kind of talk isn’t usual, you
know. The Carruthers may have
been offended, but I hardly think
they’d have murdered for it. I
smiled as nicely as 1 could because I
felt sorry for them, and the boy.”

Harrington kept wiping his
hands; then, with a flourish,
deposited the cloth back into his
pocket and stood. “Okay,” he said
brusquely. “Thanks for the infor-
mation.”

As he turned to leave, I couldn’t
help asking if he really believed the
boy or his parents had done it.
“After all,” I said, “the boy is an
android. He can’t kill anyone.”

Harrington shopped with his
hand on the door knob. He actually
looked sorry for me. “Sir, either
you read too much, or you watch
too much TV. Andy or not, if
ordered, that kid could kill as easily
as 1 could blink.”

And then he left, with silent
Ernie trailing apologetically be-
hind. Slowly I walked to the
window and gazed out toward the
bay. The sun was nearing noon,
and the glare off the water partially
blinded me to the arms of the coast
that came within a hundred meters
of turning Nova into a lake. Below
was the single block of businesses
that squatted between me and the
beach. Leaning forward, I spotted a

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

a milling group of people and a
squad car. I watched, trying to
identify some of them, until
Harrington strolled from the
building and drove away. The
crowd, small as it was, disturbed
me. Starburst wasn’t supposed to
deal in murder.

“Christ,” I said. “And I wanted
to punch that old guy in the face.”

I shook myself and dressed
quickly. At least Harrington didn’t
tell me not to leave town. Not that I
would have. I still had four days of
vacation left, and though I was
sorry for the old nameless man, and
sorrier for the shroud the crime
must have placed on the Carruth-
ers, I still intended to soak up as
much sun as possible.

And so I did until a shadow
blocked the heat, and I looked up
from my blanket into the face of the
boy: the face turned black by the
sun behind him. Specter. Swaying.
I imagine I appeared startled
because he said, “Hey, I’m sorry,
mister. Uh, can I talk with you a
minute?”

“Why, sure, why not?” I shifted
to one side and sat up. Today the
boy was fully dressed in sweat shirt,
jeans and sockless sneakers. His
dark hair was uncombed. He
squatted next to me and began to
draw nothings in the sand. Since
I’m single, I guess I haven’t
developed whatever special rapport
a man can have with a younger

version of himself; and when that
youthful image isn’t even human,
well, I just sat there, waiting for
someone to say something.

“You were nice to me and my
people last night,” he said finally,
his voice just this side of quavering.
“I think I should thank you.”

My mind was still not function-
ing properly. Part of me kept up a
warning that this kid was suspected
of murder, and my throat
tightened. The other parts kept
bumping into each other searching
for something to say that sounded
reasonably intelligent.

“They, uh, treated you rather
unkindly, son.”

He shrugged and wiped the
sand from his doodling finger. “We
get used to it. It happens all the
time, though I guess that’s not
really true. Not all the time,
anyway. Maybe it just seems bad
here because it’s so small. I’m ...
we’re not used to small places.”

He began digging into the sand ,
tossing the fill up to be caught and
scattered by a sharp, suddenly cool
breeze.

“People can be cruel at times,”

I said unoriginally. “You shouldn’t
let it bother you and your folks.
Small people, you know, and small
minds.”

The boy stared at me from the
corner of his eyes, his face still in
shadow. “Aren’t you afraid of
me?”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“Why? Should I be?”

He shrugged again and worried
the hole with the heel of his hand.
“I think that detective thinks I
killed that old man. He talked with
us nearly two hours this morning.
He said he was satisfied. I don’t
think so.”

I. shifted around to face him,
but he continued to avert his face. I
couldn’t remember seeing such a
shy boy before, though I supposed
that the shock of the crime wasn’t
the easiest thing in the world to
accept with nonchalance, especially
when he was on the receiving end of
the suspicion. I made a show of
searching the beach, stretching my
neck and gawking like a first-time
tourist. “I don’t see your, uh,
parents. Are they as unconcerned
as you?”

“My people are inside. They
don’t want anyone staring at
them.”

My people. That was the second
time he’d used that wording, and I
wondered. In the silence I found
myself trying to place his accent,
thinking it was perhaps a custom of
wherever he came from, but there
was nothing to it. Curiously so. He
could have lived anywhere. On
impulse I asked if he and his
mother and father would care to
join me for dinner. He shook his
head.

“Thank you, but no. We’ll eat
in our room until something

happens to change their minds.
The doorman almost slammed the
door in my face.”

That figures, 1 thought as the
boy struggled to his feet. He looked
dov/n at me and said, “Thank you
again,” and was gone as abruptly
as he had come. It was then that I
noticed the few sunbathers staring
at me, their hostility radiating
clearly. 1 grinned back at them and
lay face down, hoping they hadn’t
seen the grin twist to grimace.

As I lay there, I considered:
unlike members of most minorities,
androids had no recourse to courts,
education or native human talent to
drag them out of their social
ghetto. They were as marked as if
their skin had been black or brown,
only worse because whatever rights
they had stopped at the factory
entrance. And I wasn’t at all
pleased to have to admit to myself
that even I couldn’t see handing
them the same rights and privileges
as I had. I was beginning to wonder
just how far above the crowd I
really was for all my ideas. I
thought of the people who’d glared
at me: you’d better stop casting
stones, I told myself. Don’t feel
sorry for the boy, feel sorry for the
parents.

And then I dozed off, which, for
my skin, is tantamount to
stretching out on a frying pan.
When I awoke again, my back felt
as if it had been dragged over hot

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

coals. And in feeling the burning
pain, I surprised myself at the foul
language I could conjure. I tried to
put on my shirt, gave it up as the
second worst idea I’d had that day,
next to sunbathing, and gathered
my things together. I walked across
the sand and between the buildings
that had their backs to the bay.
When I reached the street, I
stopped dead at the curb. There
was the squad car again and an
ambulance. A crowd getting noisy.
And the flashing red lights. I
spotted Detective Harrington star-
ing at me, and I waved and crossed.
He met me by the police car.

“Heart attack?” I asked,
indicating the ambulance.

“You could say that,” he said
dryly. “A man has had his head
bashed in.”

I found it difficult to believe. It
was as if someone had drilled a
pipeline directly from the outside
world into Starburst and was
pumping in that which we were all
here to get away from. Some
wonder the people milling around
us were in such a foul mood. I tried
a sympathetic smile on Harring-
ton, received no reaction and
turned to go. I hadn’t taken a
single step when he placed a gently
detaining hand on my arm.

“Somebody said you were
talking to the boy.”

“Somebody?” Suddenly I was
very mad. “Just who the hell are

these somebodies that seem to
know everything, every goddamned
thing that I do or say?”

“Concerned citizens,” he said
with a slight trace of bitterness, as
if he’d had his fill of concerned
citizens. “Were you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I
was.” I looked at my watch.
“About an hour ago. On the
beach.”

“For how long?”

I tried to ignore the people
trying very hard not to appear as if
they were eavesdropping. “Hell, I
don’t know. Fifteen minutes,
maybe twenty, twenty-five.”

I looked at Harrington closely,
trying to snare a clue as to what he
was thinking. I did know that, for
some reason, he still felt the boy
had to be involved with these two
appalling crimes. Yet, if the boy
had committed them, he would
have had to have been ordered to
do so. And that meant the
Carruthers. Somehow I couldn’t
see those two becoming entangled
in something quite so lurid. I was
about to say as much when a
flower-shirted man shoved through
the crowd and confronted us. The
stereotypes come crawling out of
the woodwork, I thought and
immediately wished there was
something I could do for the big
detective.

“If you’re the police,” the man
demanded in a voice as shrill as a

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

woman’s, “why aren’t you doing
something about, this?’’

‘“Sir, I am doing what I can.”

“I don’t like it.”

Harrington shrugged. The man
was evidently a tourist, and the
detective obviously felt as if he had
more important people, like the
natives, to be answerable to. “I’m
sorry you feel that way, sir, but
unless we can — ”

“I want some protection!” the
man said loudly and was instantly
echoed by several of the crowd who
had paused to listen.

Harrington smiled wryly. “Now
how do you expect me to manage
that with the force I have here? Did
you know the man?”

“Of course not. I only arrived
yesterday.”

“Then what exactly are you
worried about?”

“Well, that killer’s obviously a
maniac. He could kill anyone
next.”

The detective stared at him,
then glanced at me. “No,” he said
quietly. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, what about that andy.”
someone else demanded. “Why the
hell don’t you lock it up? It’s
dangerous.”

With that bit of melodramatic
tripe, Harrington’s patience finally
reached its end. “Lady,” he said
with exaggerated calm, “if you can
give me the proof. I’ll snap that
kid’s tape faster than you can

blink. But he belongs to someone,
and there isn’t anything I can do
without proof. So why don’t you,
and all the rest of you, why don’t
you just go about your business and
leave us alone. You want me to
catch this man, boy, woman,
whatever, I can’t stand around here
answering your hysterical, stupid
questions.”

For a moment I was tempted to
applaud. In fact, one or two people
did. But I just stood aside while the
crowd dispersed, far more rapidly
than I thought it would. Most of
the people disappeared into the
hotel, muttering loudly. The rest
scattered and were gone within a
minute’s time. When it was quiet,
Harrington signaled the ambulance
driver, then slid into his own car.
He rolled down the window,
chewing his tobacco slowly. He
spat. “Middle-class backbone of
the race,” he said to me and drove
off. The ambulance followed and I
was alone on the sidewalk. I don’t
remember how long I stood there,
but staring passers-by reminded me
that I was dressed only in my
bathing trunks and still carrying
my beach paraphernalia. Embar-
rassed, I darted inside and rushed
up to my room. In the bathroom
was a first-aid kit, and after many
painful contortions, I managed to
empty the can of aerosol sunburn
medication onto my back.

I felt flushed.

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

Feverish, nearly groggy as if in a
nightmare.

Despite the air conditioning,
the room felt warm, but I didn’t
want to go out again. Not for a
while. A long while. In spite of
some of the other hotel guests’
fears, I realized I hadn’t once felt
as though I were in the slightest
danger, and when that fact sunk in,
I was horrified. I didn’t believe I
was in danger because I knew I had
never been anything more than
polite to the Carruthers and their
son. Guilty. Jesus Christ, I thought
they were guilty.

You son of a bitch, I told
myself. You’re as bad as the rest of
them. Would a grown man murder
for an insult as common as the ones
Carruthers must have been getting
for as long as he’d had the android?
To strike back so drastically was
too immature for the owner of a
simulacrum — he would be too
vulnerable.

Hell! It was not a pleasant day.
It had not been a pleasant vacation.

I hesitated and finally tossed my
things into my bag. I decided to
wait until after dinner to leave.
Until then, I lay on my bed, and it
wasn’t long before I fell asleep.

I dreamt, but I’d just as soon
not remember what it was I saw in
those dreams.

In Starburst, the dark is not
quite the same as in the rest of the
world. Because of the mist on the

hills, the slate and stone roofs, the
moonlight and starlight glinted off
more than just water, and the result
was a peculiar shimmer that
slightly distorted one’s vision.
When I awoke to that unnatural
light, I had a splitting headache.
Groping around on the nightstand,
I found my watch and saw it was
close to ten o’clock. Hurriedly I
swung off the bed, thinking that if I
were as good a patron as the hotel
led me to believe, I might be able to
squeeze in a meal before the
kitchen closed for the night. The
clothes I was going to wear home
were laid out on a chair, and
without turning on the lamp, I
dressed, standing in front of the
window. The moon was hazed, and
what stars there were challenged
my schoolboy knowledge of constel-
lations. I was staring out over the
building at the bay when I caught
movement on the beach. All I could
see was a group of shadows.
Struggling.

I leaned forward, straining to
make out details, curious as to who
would be playing games this time of
night, since Starburst was definite-
ly not noted for its evening
festivities. As I clipped on my tie,
the shadows merged into a single
black patch, then separated and
merged again. But not fast enough
to prevent me from spotting one of
them lying on the ground. The
figure didn’t move, and for no

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

reason other than an unpleasant
hunch, I dashed from the room
and, not wanting to wait for the
elevators, ran down the fire stairs
and outside.

Once on the sidewalk, I
hesitated for the first time,
realizing I could very likely be
making a complete ass of myself.
There were no sounds but the
evening wind in the park trees. As I
crossed the street, my heels
sounded like nails driven into wood
and I self-consciously lightened my
step. I became more cautious,
though feeling no less silly, when I
entered an alley and could see the
beach and bay beyond . By the time
I reached the far end, I was almost
on hands and knees, and now I
could hear: grunting, and the dull
slap of body blows, struggling feet
scraping against the sand. It didn’t
take a mastermind to figure out
what was happening, and, for all
my professed cowardice, I burst
from the alley shouting, just a split
second before I heard someone
gasp, “Oh my God, look at that!’’

The group of people were close
to fifty meters from me, and when
they heard my racket, they
scattered, leaving me behind,
motionless on the beach.

I vacillated, then ran to the
fallen body. Closer, and in the dim
moonlight I could see it was the
boy.

Standing next to him, I could

see he was bleeding.

And kneeling, I knew he was
dead.

A boy.

I panted, my breath shudder-
ing.

A boy.

I’m not sure exactly what I felt
at the moment. Shock, anger,
sorrow. Anger, I suppose, the
greatest of these. Not so much for
the shadows who had killed him,
but for the ruse he had perpetrated
on us all. Callously I stared at his
bloodied face and thought: you
tricked me. Damnit, you tricked
me.

Slowly 1 rose. I brushed the
sand from my knees and walked
swiftly back to the hotel. Just
before I stepped into the lobby, I
saw the whirling red light on a
squad car, and I was glad I wasn’t
the one who had made the call.

The fourth floor, like the lobby
and elevator, was deserted. I
walked to the end of the hall and
knocked on the Carruthers’ door.
When there was no answer, I
knocked again and turned the
knob. The door opened to a
darkened room, and I stepped in.

The man and woman were
sitting motionless in identical
chairs facing the room’s only
window.

“Mr. Carruthers?” I didn’t
expect an answer, and I received
none.

A CROWD OF SHADOWS

I moved closer and gathered
what nerve I had left to reach down
and touch the woman’s cheek,
poised to snap my hand back
should she flinch. The skin was
cold. She didn’t move, didn’t react.
She and the man stared directly
into the moonlight without blink-
ing. Carefully I rolled up her sleeve,
and though the light was dim, I
found the markings easily. There
was no need to do the same to the
man.

I was still standing there when
the lights flicked”’^ on and Harring-
ton lumbered in, followed by a
covey of police photographers and
fingerprint men. The detective
waited until my eyes adjusted to the
bright light, then pulled me to one
side, away from the strangely silent
activities. It was as if they were
investigating a morgue. Harrington
watched for a while, pulling out his

handkerchief and again wiping his
hands. I never did learn how he’d
picked up that habit, but at that
particular time it seemed more
than apropos.

“You, uh, saw the boy, I take
it?’’ he said.

I nodded dumbly.

“Didn’t happen to see who did
it, I suppose.”

“Only some shadows, Harring-
ton. They were gone before I got
close enough to identify them. Any
of them.”

One of the men coughed and
immediately apologized.

“Would it be too much to ask
who called you?” I said.

“What call? I was coming over
here to question the kid.” He
pulled a slip of wrinkled paper
from his jacket pocket and
squinted at some writing. “I
checked on the, uh, parents, just

f ^ ^

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V J

for the hell of it, just to keep those
people off my back. Seems he was
fairly well off — the kid, I mean.
He is, was eighteen and from the
time he was six was shunted back
and forth between aunts and uncles
like a busted ping-pong ball.” He
shook his head and pointed a
stubby finger at some line on the
paper. “When he reached majority
and claimed his money, he bought
himself some guardians. Parents, I
guess they were supposed to be.
According to some relative of his,
this was the first place he brought
them. Trial run.” He shoved the
paper back into his pocket as
though it were filth. “I’m surprised
nobody noticed.”

I had nothing to say. And
Harrington didn’t stop me when I
left.

My people.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

He had deliberately exposed the
false identification on his arm and
had never once looked me straight
in the eye. It was all there, but who
would have thought to look for it?
He had been challenging me and
everyone else, using the simulacra
to strike back at the world. Maybe
he wanted to be exposed; maybe he
was looking for someone as real as I
to stop the charade and give him a
flesh-and-blood hand to shake.
Maybe — but when I think of going
back to a city filled with androids
and angry people,' I get afraid.

And worse . . . my own so-called
liberal, humanitarian, live-and-let-
live armor had been stripped away,
and I don’t like what I see. As
much as I feel sorry for the boy, I
hate him for what he’s done to me.

That crowd of shadows could
have easily held one more.

Mercury Press, Inc., Box 56, Cornwall, Conn. 06753

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City

Man plus is cyborg astronaut Roger Torraway, and here, in
the stunning conclusion to Fred Pohl's new novel, Torraway

is launched on a mission to Mars.

Man Plus

by FREDERIK POHL

Synopsis of Parts I and II: From every
indication we could find the world was
getting ready to exterminate itself, and
so it was time to move on. New People’s
Asia was squared off against the
Australians in the Pacific, and nearer
to home the cities of the United States
were in a semi-permanent state of
armed riot. The President of the United
States studied our projections and
ordered the creation of a Cyborg
astronaut to become the first Martian:
the first human being to be so
structured that he could live comfort-
ably on the surface of Mars. Willy
Hartnett was chosen for the task,
surgically deprived of all his unneces-
sary parts, mechanically supplied with
new ones and trained to the use of his
new body. Whereupon he died, unable
to handle the new inputs.

The next man in line was Roger
Torraway.

Roger was an astronaut of wide
experience; he was also the husband of
Dorrie Torraway, which caused certain
complications, because she was widely
experienced too. Among her inputs was
one of the specialists helping to put the
new Roger Torraway together, Alex-
ander Bradley. What Brad did was to

supervise the mediation apparatus
inside the Cyborg system which
interpreted the new sensory stimuli in
ways that the human brain of the
Cyborg could handle. Sensory stimuli
were Brad’s hobby, as well as his
profession. Father Don Kayman, the
Jesuit priest who was also the Project’s
chief specialist on Mars, also found
himself doubly involved in what was
going on at the Project headquarters in
Tonka, Oklahoma. As a scientist, he
was deeply involved in the task of
making Roger’s new sensorium and
musculature work. As a priest and a
friend, he was concerned about Roger
Torraway as a human being. Don
Kayman feared the relationship be-
tween Dorrie Torraway and Brad as a
threat to the Project.

And so did we. After all, we had the
survival of the race to consider.

Nevertheless the Project went on,
and Roger began to learn the uses of
the leg muscles that could let him run
at a hundred kilometers an hour, the
eyes that saw into ultraviolet and
infrared, the new replacements for
heart and lungs that made him
independent of breathing and of
warmth. Because there was so much to

handle, he had been given a sort of
auxiliary brain, a backpack computer
that received all the inputs of his senses
and organized them into images and
sensations that he could perceive as
gestalts. Sometimes the images were
terrifying, sometimes beautiful.

But Roger himself was far from
beautiful. His new vision came through
grotesque insect eyes that covered most
of the top part of his face. Solar
receptor panels, gauzy black mem-
branes, were designed to flow from his
shoulders, looking like the wings of a
demon. He did not want his wife to see
him in this condition ... and yet he
wanted to see his wife.

His emotional condition was
threatening the success of the whole
endeavor, and so we took steps.
President Deshatine made a special trip
to Tonka to see what was going wrong.
As a consequence Dorrie’s affair with
Brad was put on permanent hold, for
the duration, and Roger was supplied
with a new friend. Her service record
said she was Sulie Carpenter, a major
with a first-class record as astronaut-
trainee, medical doctor-psychiatrist
and research scientist in the space
program. To Roger she was introduced
only as a new nurse. But what he saw
was not just a nurse, it was a woman
who looked very much like his wife
Dorrie. There was no accident about it:
hair dye, contact lenses and an
intensive course in the mannerisms and
speech patterns of Dorrie Torraway
were what made the resemblance. Her
job was to make Roger happy, or as
happy as a human being can be when
most of his humanity, including his
sexual equipment, have been removed
as surplus to requirements.

Nevertheless she was only partly
successful.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Roger lay awake one night, thinking
about Dorrie, and decided to do
something about it. He short-circuited
the Project’s electrical system, and in
the blackout slipped out and ran, at the
full speed of his Cyborg legs, into
Tonka to see his wife. With his infrared
vision and instant responses he had no
difficulty in getting past guards and
police, and entering his home. He saw
Dorrie, frightening her with his
grotesque appearance. They talked,
and he realized that to her he was now a
stranger; and when the people from the
Project came to get him, he returned
without objection.

We calculated the probabilities and
determined that there was too much at
stake to risk another adventure of
Roger’s. So the time-sense of his new
body was artifically slowed. He was put
into standby mode, so that the
remaining days before the launch
seemed to him only a few minutes ....

And the Mars Project was ready to
launch.

Chapter Thirteen

When We Pass the Point of
No Return

The long Hohmann-orbit trip to
Mars takes seven months. All
previous astronauts, cosmonauts
and sinonauts had found them very
wearing months indeed. Each day

MAN PLUS

had 86,400 seconds to fill, and
there was very little to fill them
with.

Roger was different from all the
others in two ways. First, he was the
most precious passenger any
spaceship had yet carried. In and
around his body were the fruits of
seven billion Man Plus dollars. To
the maximum extent possible, he
had to be spared.

The other way was that,
uniquely, he could be spared.

His body clocks had been
disconnected. His perception of
time was what the computer told
him it should be.

They slowed him down gradual-
ly, at first. People began to seem to
move a little more briskly.
Mealtime came sooner than he was
ready for it. Voices grew shriller.

When that phased in nicely,
they increased the retardation in
his systems. Voices passed into
high-pitched gibberish and then
out of his perception entirely. He
hardly saw people at all, except as
flickers of motion. They sealed off
his room from the day — it was not
to keep him from escaping, it was
to protect him from the quick
transition from day to night.
Platters of room-temperature, pic-
nic-style food appeared before him.
When he had begun to push them
away to signal he was done, or
didn’t want them, they whisked out
of sight.

Roger knew what was being
done to him. He didn’t mind. He
accepted Sulie’s promise that it was
good, and needful, and all right. He
thought he was going to miss Sulie
and looked for a way to tell her so.
There was a way, but it all went so
rapidly; messages were chalked as
if by magic on a board in front of
him. When he responded, he found
his answers snatched away and
erased before he was quite sure he
was through:

HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
Pick up the chalk, write one
word.

FINE

and then the board is gone,
brought back with another mes-
sage —

WE’RE TAKING YOU TO
MERRITT ISLAND
And his reply
I’M READY

snatched away before he could add
the rest, which he scrawled rapidly
on his bedside table —

GIVE MY LOVE TO DORRIE
He had intended to add “and
Sulie,” but there was no time;
suddenly the table was gone. He
was gone from the room. There was
a sudden dizzying lurch of
movement. He caught a quick
glimpse of the ambulance entrance
to the project and a quick phantom
glimpse of a nurse — was it Sulie?
— with her back to him adjusting
her panty hose. His whole bed

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

seemed to leap into the air, into a
brutal blaze of winter sunlight,
then into — what? A car? Before he
could even question, it sprang into
the air, and he realized that it was a
helicopter and then that he was
very close to being sick. He felt his
gorge rising in his throat.

The telemetry faithfully re-
ported, and the controls were
adequate to the problem. He still
felt he would like to vomit, feeling
himself thrown around as though in
the most violent sort of cross-chop
sea; but he did not.

Then they stopped.

Out of the helicopter.

Bright sunlight again.

Into something else — which he
recognized, after it had begun to
move, as the interior of a CB-5,
fitted up as a hospital ship. Safety
webbing spun magically around
him.

It was not comfortable — there
was still the hammering, and the
twisting vertigo, though not as
unbearable — but it did not last
long. A minute or two, it seemed to
Roger. Then pressure smote his
ears, and they were taking him out
of the plane, into blinding heat and
light — Florida, of course, he
realized tardily; but by then he was
in an ambulance, then out of it ....

Then, for a time that seemed to
Roger ten or fifteen minutes and
was actually the better part of a
day, nothing happened except that

he was in a bed, and was fed, and
his wastes were removed by
catheter, and then a note appeared
before him:

GOOD LUCK, ROGER,
WE’RE ON OUR WAY
•and then a steam hammer smote
him from underneath, and he lost
consciousness. It is all very well, he
thought, to spare me the incon-
venience of boredom, but you may
be killing me to do it. But before he
could think of a way to
communicate this to anyone, he
was out.

Time passed. A time of dreams.

He realized groggily that they
had been keeping him sedated, not
only slowed down but asleep; and
in realizing that he was awake.

There was no feeling of
pressure. In fact, he was floating.
Only a spiderweb of retaining
straps kept him in place.

He was in space.

A voice spoke next to his ear.

“Good morning, Roger. This is
a tape recording.”

He turned his head and found a
tiny speaker grille next to his ear.

“We’ve slowed it down so that
you can understand it. If you want
to speak to us, you just tape what
you want to say, in a minute. Then
we’ll speed it up so we can
understand it. Ain’t science grand?

“Anyway, we’re into day
thirty-one as I tape this. In case you
don’t remember me any more. I’m

MAN PLUS

Don Kayman. You had a little
trouble. Your muscle system fought
against the takeoff acceleration,
and you pulled some ligaments. We
had to do a little surgery. You’re
mending nicely. Brad rebuilt part
of the cybernetics, and you
probably can handle the deltas
when we land in good shape. Let’s
see. There’s nothing else important
to say, and probably you have some
questions, but before you take your
turn, there’s a message for you.”

And the tape whispered scratch-
ily for a moment, and then Dorrie’s
voice came on, bent and attenu-
ated. Over a background hiss of
static she said:

“Hi, honey. Everything’s fine
back home, and I’m keeping the
home fires burning for you. I think
of you. Take care of yourself.”

And then Kayman’s voice
again:

“Now here’s what you do. First
off, if there’s anything important —
if you hurt, or anything like that —
tell us that right away. There’s a lot
of real-time loss in this; so say the
important stuff first, and when
you’re through just hold up your
hand while we change tapes, and
then you can go on to the chitchat.
Now go.”

And the tape stopped, and a
small red light that had said “Play”
next to the speaker grille went out,
and a green one came on to say
“Record.”

He picked up the microphone
and was getting ready to say that
no, there wasn’t any particular
problem, when he happened to look
down and notice that his right leg
was missing.

We were, of course, monitoring
every moment in the spacecraft.

The communication link had
stretched pretty thin even after the
first month. The geometry was
troublesome. While the spacecraft
was climbing out toward Mar’s
orbit. Mars was moving. So was the
Earth, and a good deal faster. It
would go around the sun almost
twice before Mars completed a
single one of its orbits. The
telemetry from the spacecraft now
took something like three minutes
to reach Goldstone. We were
passive listeners. It would get
worse. Any command from Earth
would come an hour late by the
time the spacecraft was circling
Mars, round-trip time at the speed
of light. We had surrendered
instant control; the ship and its
passengers were effectively on their
own.

Later still. Earth and Mars
would be on opposite sides of the
sun. The weak signals from the
spacecraft would be so comprom-
ised by solar interference that we
would not even receive reliably. But
by then the 3070 would be in orbit,
and shortly thereafter the MHD

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

generator would join it. Then there
would be plenty of power for
everything. It was all planned out,
where each would go, how they
would interlink with each other,
with the orbiting ship, with the
ground station and with Roger,
wherever he might roam.

We launched the 3070, powered
down into stand-by mode. It was a
robot run. The ionization risk
turned out, on analysis, to be
unacceptable in a spacecraft of
normal configuration. So the Cape
engineers stripped away all the life
support, all the telemetry, the
demolition system and half of the
maneuver capability. The weight
went into shielding. Once it was
launched it was silent and lifeless
and would stay that way for seven
months. Then General Hesburgh
would capture control and play
both ends of the docking maneuver.
It would be difficult, but that was
what he was paid for.

We launched the MHD genera-
tor a month later, with a crew of
two volunteers and a maximum of
publicity. Everyone was interested
now. And no one objected, not even
the NPA. They disdained the first
launch. They acknowledged track-
ing the launch of the 3070 and
offered their data to the NASA net.
When the generator went up, their
ambassador sent a polite note of
congratulation.

Something was happening.

It was not all psychological.
New York City had two straight
weeks without rioting, and garbage
was collected from some of the
main streets. Winter rains put out
the last of the great fires in the
northwest, and the governors of
Washington, Oregon, Idaho and
California sent out a joint call for
volunteers. More than a hundred
thousand young people signed up
to replant the mountain slopes.

The President of the United
States was the last to notice the
change; he was too busy with the
internal disasters of a nation that
had overbred and overspent itself
into tragedy. But the time came
when he realized there had been a
change, not only within the United
States but worldwide, not only in a
change in mood but in a change in
tactics. The Asians withdrew their
nuclear subs to the waters of the
Western Pacific and the Indian
Ocean, and when Dash got
confirmation of that, he picked up
the phone and called Vern
Scanyon.

“I think — ” He paused and
reached out to touch the smooth
wood of his desk top. “I think it’s
working. Pat your staff on the back
for me. Now, what else do you
need?”

But there was nothing.

We had gone as far as we could
go, and the rest was up to the
expedition itself.

MAN PLUS

Chapter Fourteen
Missionary to Mars

Not more than six times a day
Don Kayman allowed himself to
pray. He prayed for various things
— sometimes for relief from the
sound of Titus Hesburgh sucking
his teeth, sometimes to be spared
the smell of stale farts that
smogged the interior of the
spacecraft — but there were always
three petitions in each prayer: the
success of the mission, the
fulfillment of God’s plan for Man
and, most particularly, the health
and well being of his friend, Roger
Torraway.

Roger had the distinction of a
private stateroom of his own. It was
not much of a room, and the
privacy was only an elastic curtain,
gossamer thin and not wholly
opaque; but it was all his. The
other three shared the crew cabin.
Sometimes Roger shared it, too, or
at least parts of Roger did. He was
all over the place, Roger was.

Kayman looked in on him
often. The trip was a long, dull time
for him. His own specialty, which
was of course not operative until
they actually set foot on the surface
of Mars, needed no touch-up or
practice. Areology was a static
science and would remain so until
he himself, hopefully, added
something to it after landing. So he
had let Titus Hensburgh teach him

the instrument board and, a little
later, let Brad teach him something
about field-stripping a Cyborg. The
grotesque form that slowly writhed
and postured in its foam cocoon
was no longer unfamiliar. Kayman
knew every inch of it, inside and
out. As the weeks wore on he lost
the abhorrence that had deterred
him from wrenching an eye from its
socket or opening a panel into a
plastic-lined gut.

It was not all he had to do. He
had his music tapes to listen to, an
occasional microfiche to read,
games to play. At chess he and
Titus Hesburgh were pretty evenly
matched. They played interminable
tournaments, best 38 games out of
75, and used their personal comm
allotments to have chess texts
radioed up to them from Earth. It
would have been relaxing for
Father Kayman to pray more, but
after the first week it had occurred
to him that even prayer could be
carried to excess. He rationed it
out, on awakening, before meals, in
midevening and before retiring.
That was all. That was not, of
course, to count the quick lift from
a Paternoster or from telling His
Holiness’s rosary. And then he
would go back to the endless
refurbishing of Roger. He had
always had a queasy stomach, but
oviously Roger was oblivious to
these invasions of his person and
took no harm from them. Kayman

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

gradually began to appreciate the
inner beauty of Roger’s anatomy,
both that part which was Man’s
handiwork and that part which was
God’s; he gave thanks for both.

He could not quite give thanks
for what God and man had done to
the interior of Roger’s mind. It
troubled him that seven months
was being stolen out of his friend’s
life. It drew forth compassion that
Roger’s love went to a woman who
held it cheap.

But, everything considered,
Kayman was happy.

He had never been on a Mars
mission before, but this was where
he belonged. Twice he had been in
space: a shuttle run to an orbiter,
when he was still a graduate
student seeking his doctorate in
planetology; then a ninety-day tour
in Space Station Betty. Both were
acknowledged to be mere practice
for the mission that would complete
his study of Mars.

All that he knew of Mars he had
learned telescopically, or deductive-
ly, or from the observations of
others. He knew a lot of that. He
had played and replayed the
synoptic tapes of all the Orbiters
and Mariners and Surveyors. He
had analyzed returned bits of soil
and rock. He had interviewed the
Americans, French and British who
had landed in their Mars expedi-
tions, and most of the Russians,
Japanese and Chinese.

He knew all about Mars. He
always had.

As a child he had grown up on
the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars,
the colorful Barsoom of the ocher
dead sea bottoms and hurtling tiny
moons. As he grew older he
distinguished fact from fiction.
There was no reality in the
four-armed green warriors and the
red-skinned, egg-laying beautiful
Martian princesses, to the extent
that science was in touch with
“reality.” But he knew that
scientists’ estimates of “reality”
changed from year to year.
Burroughs had not invented
Barsoom out of airy imaginings. He
had taken it almost verbatim from
the most authoritative scientific
“reality” of his day. It was Percival
Lowell’s Mars, not Burroughs’s,
that was finally denied by bigger
telescopes and by space probes. In
the “reality” of scientific opinion,
life on Mars had been born and
died a dozen times.

But even that had never been
settled, really. It depended on a
philosophical question. What was
“life”? Did it have to mean a
creature that resembled an ape or
an oak tree? Did it necessarily
mean a creature which dissolved its
nutrients in a water-based biology,
took part in an oxidation-reduetion
cycle of energy transfer, reproduced
itself and grew thereby from the
environment? Don Kayman did not

MAN PLUS

think so. He considered it
arrogance to limit “life” so
parochially, and he was humble in
the face of his Creator’s all-poten-
tiating majesty.

In any case, the case for life
genetically related to Earth life was
still open. Well, ajar. True, no ape
or oak tree had been found. Not
even a lichen. Not even a growing
cell. Not even (he had to confess
with rue, because Dejah Thoris
died hard in his bosom) such
prerequisites as free oxygen or
water.

But Kayman did not accept that
the fact that no one had slipped on
a bed of Martian moss meant there
was none anywhere on Mars to slip
on. Less than a hundred human
beings had ever set foot on Mars.
The combined area of their
explorations was only a matter of a
few hundred square miles. On
Mars! Where there were no oceans,
and so the land surface to explore
was greater than the Earth’s! It was
almost like pretending to know the
Earth by making four quick trips to
the Sahara, the top of the
Himalayas, Antarctica and the
Greenland icecap ....

Well, no, Kayman conceded to
himself. That wasn’t strictly fair.
There had been innumerable
fly-bys and orbiters, surveyors that
landed and snatched up samples of
soil.

Nevertheless the principle was

sound. There was too much of
Mars. No one could pretend that it
did not possess secrets still. Water
might yet be found. Some of the
rifts looked hopeful. Some of the
valleys had shapes that could
hardly be understood, unless you
assumed they were carved out by
streams. Even if they were dry,
there still might be water, vast
oceans of water even, locked under
the surface. Oxygen one knew was
present. Not a great deal on the
average, but averages were not
important. Locally there could be
plenty. And so there might be ....

Life.

Kayman sighed. It was one of
his great regrets that he had not
been able to deflect the decision on
a landing place to one of his
personal favorites for suspicion of
life, the Solis Lacus area. The
decision had gone against him. It
had been taken on very high
authority — in fact, it was Dash
himself who said, “I don’t give a
leaping shit where something may
be alive now. I want to put this bird
down where our boy can expect to
stay alive the easiest.”

So they had picked a spot
nearer the equator and in the
northern hemisphere; the main
features were called Isidius Regio
and Nepenthes, and at their
interface was a gentle crater that
Don Kayman had privately christ-
ened Home.

Also privately, he regretted the
loss of Solis Lacus and its
seasonally changing shape (growing
plants? Probably not — but one
could hope!), the bright W-shaped
cloud around the canals of Ulysses
and Fortunae that had formed and
reformed every afternoon through
one long conjunction, the brilliant
flash (reflected sunlight? a hydro-
gen-fusion blast?) that Saheki saw
in Tithonius Lacus on the first of
December, 1951, as bright as a
sixth-magnitude star. Somebody
else would have to investigate these
things. He would not.

But apart from such regrets, he
was content enough. The northern
hemisphere was a wise choice. Its
seasons were better arranged
because, just as on Earth, the
northern hemisphere had its winter
when it was closest to the Sun and
so kept marginally warmer all year
around. Winter there was 20 days
shorter than summer; in the south,
of course, it was the other way
around. And although Home had
never been observed to change
shape or emit flashes of light, it
had, in fact, been identified with a
fair number of recent cloud
formations. Kayman had not given
up hope that some of the clouds
were of water ice, if not water itself!
He fantasied afternoon thunder-
showers on the Martian plain; and
more soberly thought about the
large stretches of limonite that had

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

been identified nearby. Limonite
contained bound water in quantity;
it would be a resource for Roger,
even if no Martian plant or animal
had evolved to exploit it.

On the whole, he was content
about everything.

He was en route to Mars! That
was a source of great joy to him, for
which he rendered thanks six times
each day. Also, he had a hope.

Don Kayman was too good a
scientist to confuse his hopes with
observations. He would report what
he found. But he knew what he
wanted to find. He wanted to find
life.

To the extent that the mission’s
purposes permitted, in the ninety-
one Martian days he would be able
to stay on the planet’s surface, he
would keep his eyes open. Everyone
knew he would do this. It was in
fact part of his contingent,
time-permitting briefing instruc-
tions.

What not everyone knew was
why Kayman was so interested.

Dejah Thoris was not quite
dead for him. He still had hope that
there would be life; not only life but
intelligent life; not only intelligent
life, but life with a soul to save and
bring to his God.

Everything that happened on
the spacecraft was under constant
surveillance, and synoptic trans-
missions took place to Earth

MAN PLUS

regularly. So we kept tabs on them.
We watched the chess games and
the arguments. We monitored
Brad’s currycombing of Roger’s
bodily functions, both meat and
metal. We saw the night when
Titus Hesburgh wept for five hours,
gently and dreamily, rebuffing all
of Kayman’s offers to sympathize
with a smile through tears. In some
ways Hesburgh had the lousiest job
aboard; seven months coming,
seven months going and, in
between, three months of nothing.
He would be all alone in orbit while
Kayman, Brad and Roger were
disporting themselves on the
surface. He would be lonely, and he
would be bored.

He would be worse than that.
Seventeen months in space was a
practical guarantee that for the last
few decades of his life he would be
plagued by a hundred different
muscle, bone and circulatory
disorders. They exercised faithfully,
wrestling each other and struggling
against springs, flailing their arms
and pumping their legs; that would
not be enough. There was
inevitably calcium resorption from
the bone, and loss of muscle tone.
For those who landed, the three
months on Mars would make a
great difference. In that time they
would repair much of the damage,
and be in better shape for the
return. For Hesburgh there was no
such break. His seventeen months

in zero-G would be uninterrupted,
and the experience of previous
spacefarers had made the conse-
quences clear. It meant lowering
his life expectancy by a decade or
more. And if he wept once in a
while, there was no one who had
better reason.

Time passed, time passed. A
month, two months, six months.
Beyond them in the skies the
capsule with the 3070 was climbing
after them; behind it, the magneto-
hydrodynamic power plant with its
crew of two. When they were two
weeks out they ceremoniously
switched watches, changing to new
quartz-crystal timepieces set to the
Martian day. From then on they
lived by the Martian clock. It made
little enough practical difference;
the day for Mars is just a bit more
than thirty-seven minutes longer
than Earth’s; but the difference
was significant in their minds. One
week out they began to speed Roger
up.

For Roger the seven months
had felt like thirty hours, subjective
time. It had been time enough. He
had eaten a few meals, exchanged
several dozen communications with
the rest of the crew. He had
received messages from Earth and
returned a few of them. He had
asked for his guitar, been refused it
on the grounds that he couldn’t
play it, asked for it anyway out of
curiosity and found that that was

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

quite true: he could pluck a string,
but he could not hear the note that
resulted from it. In fact, apart from
the specially slowed-down tapes, he
could hear nothing at all most of
the time, and only a sort of
high-pitched scurrying sound ever.
Air did not conduct the sort of
vibrations he could perceive. When
the tape recorder was out of contact
with the metal frame to which he
was bound, he could not hear even
it, nor could his own voice be made
to record.

They warned him they were
beginning to accelerate his percep-
tions. They left the curtain to his
cubicle open, and he began to
notice flickers of motion. He caught
a glimpse of Hesburgh dozing
nearby, then saw figures actually
moving; after a time he even
recognized who they were. Then
they put him to sleep, to make final
adjustments on his backpack, and
when he woke up he was alone, the
curtain was drawn — and he heard
voices.

He pushed the curtain aside
and looked out, and there was the
smiling face of his wife’s lover
greeting him. “Good morning,
Roger! Nice to have you with us
again.”

... And eighteen minutes later,
twelve travel time and the rest
decoding and relaying, the Presi-
dent watched it happen froin a
hundred million miles away, on the

screen in the Oval Office.

He was not the only one. The
TV nets put the scene on the air,
and the satellites rebroadcast it all
over the world. They were watching
in the Under Palace in Peking, and
inside the Kremlin; on Downing
Street and the Champs Elysees and
Ginza.

“Son of a bitch,” said Dash
historically, “they’ve made it.”

Vern Scanyon was with him.
“Son of a bitch,” he echoed. Then
he said, “Well, almost made it.
They’ve still got to land.”

“Any problem about that?”

Cautiously: “Not as far as I
know — ”

“God,” said the President
positively, “would not be so unfair.
I think you and I are going to taste
some bourbon right now; it’s about
that time.”

They stayed and watched for
half an hour, and a quarter of a
bottle. On and off" over the next few
days they watched more, they and
the rest of the world. The whole
world saw Hesburgh making final
checks and preparing the Mars
lander for separation. Watched
Don Kayman go through a dry run
under the pilot’s microscopic
observation, since he would be at
the controls for the trip down out of
orbit. Watched Brad make a final,
ultimate recheck on Roger’s
telemetry, find it all functioning in
the green, and then do it over one

MAN PLUS

more time. Watched Roger himself
moving about the crew cabin and
squeezing into the lander.

And watched the lander separ-
ate, and Hesburgh look wistfully
out at its minue-delta flare as it
began to drop out of orbit.

We figured that three and a
quarter billion people watched the
landing. It was not much to watch;
if you have seen one landing, you
have seen them all. But it was
important.

It began at a quarter to four in
the morning, Washington time,
and the President had himself
awakened to see it. “That priest,”
he said, frowning, “what kind of a
pilot is he? If anything goes wrong

“He’s checked out, sir,” sooth-
ed his NASA aide. “Anyway, he’s
actually only about a third-place
backup. The automatic sequencing
is in primary control. If anything
goes wrong. General Hesburgh is
monitoring it from the orbiter, and
he can override. Father Kayman
doesn’t have anything to do unless
everything goes wrong at once.”

Dash shrugged, and the aide
noticed that the President’s fingers
were crossed. “What about the
follow-up flights?” he asked,
staring at the screen.

“No sweat at all, sir. The
computer will inject into Mars orbit
in thirty-two days, and the
generator twenty-seven days later.

As soon as the lander is down.
General Hesburgh is going to
perform a course correction and
overtake the moon Deimos. We
expect to land both the computer
and the generator there, probably
in the crater Voltaire; Hesburgh
will make that determination for
us.”

“Um,” said the President. “Has
Roger been told who’s on the
generator spacecraft?”

“No, sir.”

“Um.” The President aban-
doned the television screen and got
up. At the window, staring out at
the pretty White House lav/n,
June-green and blossoming, he
said, “There’s a man coming over
from the computer center in
Alexandria. I’d like you to be here
when he arrives.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Commander Chiaroso. Sup-
posed to be pretty good. Used to be
a professor at M.I.T. He says
there’s something strange about
our projections about this whole
project. Have you heard any
gossip?

“No, sir,” said the NASA aide,
alarmed. “Strange, sir?”

Dash shrugged. “That’s all I
need,” he said, “getting this whole
son-of-a-bitching thing going and
then finding out — Hey! What the
hell’s happening?”

On the TV screen the image was
jumping and breaking up; it went

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

out entirely, restored itself and
disappeared again, leaving only the
tracery of raster.

“That’s all right, sir,’’ said the
aide quickly. “It’s reentry buffet-
ing. When they hit the atmosphere
they lose video contact. Even the
telemetry’s affected, but we’ve got
ample margins all around; it’ll be
all right.”

The President demanded:
“Why the hell is that? I thought the
whole point was that Mars didn’t
have any atmosphere?”

“Not a lot, sir. But it does have
some, and because it’s smaller, it’s
got a shallower, flatter gravity well.
In the upper atmosphere it’s just
about as dense as the Earth’s is, at
the same altitude, and that’s where
the buffeting happens.”

“God damn it,” snarled the
President, “I don’t like surprises!
Why didn’t somebody tell me
this?”

“Well, sir — ”

“Never mind! I’ll take it up
later. I hope surprising Torraway
isn’t going to be a mistake — Well,
forget it. What’s happening now?”

The aide looked not at the
screen but at his watch. “Parachute
deployment, sir. They’ve completed
retrofire. Now it’s just a matter of
coming down. In a few seconds — ”
The aide pointed to the screen,
which obediently built itself into a
picture again. “There! They’re in
controlled descent mode now.”

And they sat, and waited, while
the lander slid down through the
thin Martian air under its immense
canopy, quintuple the size of a
parachute built for air.

When it hit, the sound came a
hundred million miles and then
sounded like trash cans falling off a
roof. But the lander had been built
for it; and the crew were long since
in their protective cocoons.

There was a hissing sound from
the screen, and the clicking of
cooling metal. And then Brad’s
voice.

“We’re on Mars,” he said
prayerfully, and Father Kayman
began to whisper the words from
the Ordinary of the Mass:
“Laudamas te, benedicimus te,
adoramus te, glorificamfrs te.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra
pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.”

And to the familiar words he
added, “Et in Martis.”

Chapter Fifteen

How the Good News Went
from Mars to Earth

When we first realized that
there was a serious risk that a
major war would destroy civiliza-
tion and make the Earth uninhabit-
able — which is to say, shortly after
we collectively began to realize
anything at all — we decided to
take steps to colonize Mars. It
wasn’t easy for us. The whole

MAN PLUS

human race was in trouble. Energy
was in short supply the world over,
which meant fertilizer was expen-
sive, which meant people were
hungry, which meant explosively
dangerous tensions. The world’s
resources were none too ample for
the bare necessity of keeping
billions of people alive. We had to
find ways to divert capacities that
were badly needed elsewhere to
long-range planning. We set up
three separate think tanks and gave
them all the facilities we could steal
from daily needs. One explored
options for solving the growing
tensions on Earth. One was
charged with setting up refuges on
Earth itself, so that even if a
thermonuclear war did occur a
small fraction of us could survive.
The third looked into extraterres-
trial possibilities.

In the beginning it seemed as
though we had a thousand options
to choose from, and each of the
three major tracks had branches
that looked hopeful. One by one the
tracks closed off. Our best
estimates — not the ones we gave
the President of the United States,
but the private ones we showed to
nobody but ourselves — were of
point nine to ten nines probability
of thermoculear war within a
decade; and we closed down the
center for solving international
tensions in the first year. Setting up
refuges was a little more hopeful. It

developed that worst-case analysis
indicated a few places on the Earth
that would be unlikely to expe-
rience direct attack — Antar-
ctica, parts of the Sahara, even
some of Australia and a number of
islands. Ten sites were selected.
Each one had only a point zero one
or less probability of being
destroyed; if all ten were consider-
ed, the probability that they would
all be destroyed was relatively
insignificant. But fine-grain analy-
sis showed that there were two
flaws. For one, we could not be sure
how much long-life isotope would
remain in the atmosphere after
such a war, and the indications
were that there would be excessive
levels of ionizing radiation for as
much as a thousand years. Over
that time scale, the probability that
even one of the refuges would
survive became far less than point
five. Worst of all, there was the
necessity for capital investment. To
build the refuges underground and
fill them with the immense quantity
needed of complex electronic
equipment, generators, fuel re-
serves and so on was, as a practical
matter, impossible. There was no
way for us to get the money.

So we terminated that think
tank, and put all the resources we
could manage into extraterrestrial
colonization. At the beginning, that
had looked like the least hopeful
solution of all.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

But — almost! — we had
managed to make it work. When
Roger Torraway landed, that
completed the first and hardest
step. By the time the ships that
were following him reached their
positions, in orbit or on the surfface
of the planet, we would be able, for
the first time, to plan for a future,
with the survival of the race
assured.

So we watched with great
satisfaction as Roger stepped out
on the surface of the planet.

Roger’s backpack computer
was a triumph of design. It had
three separate systems, cross-linked
and sharing facilities, but with
enough redundancy so that all
systems had point nine reliability at
least until the 3070 backup
computer reached orbit. One
system mediated his perceptions.
Another controlled the subsystems
of nerve and muscle that let him
walk and move. The third
telemetered all of his inputs.
Whatever he saw, we saw on Earth.

We had gone to some trouble to
arrange this. By Shannon’s Law
there was not enough bandwidth to
transmit everything, but we had
included a random sampling
feature. Approximately one bit per
hundred was transmitted — first to
the radio in the landing craft,
where we had assigned one channel
permanently for that purpose.

Then rebroadcast to the orbiter,
where General Hesburgh floated,
watching the television screen while
the calcium oozed out of his bones.
From there, cleaned and amplified,
it was burst-transmitted to which-
ever synchronous satellite of Earth
was at that moment locked into
both Mars and Goldstone. So what
we all saw was only about one per
cent “real.” But that was enough.
The rest was filled in by a
comparison program we had
written for the Goldstone receiver.
Hesburgh saw only a series of stills;
on Earth we broadcast what looked
exactly like on-the-spot movies of
whatever Roger saw.

So all over the Earth, on
television sets in every country,
people watched the beige and
brown mountains that rose ten
miles tall, saw the glint of Martian
sunlight off the windowframes of
the lander, could even read the
expression on Father Kayman’s
face as he rose from prayer and, for
the first time, looked out on Mars.

In the Under Palace in Peking
the great lords of New People’s Asia
interrupted a planning session to
watch the screen. Their feelings
were mixed. It was America’s
triumph, not theirs. In the Oval
Office President Deshatine’s joy
was pure. Not only was the triumph
American, it was personal; he was
identified forever as the President
who had established humanity on

MAN PLUS

Mars. Almost everybody was at
least a little joyous — even Dorrie
Torraway, who sat in the private
room at the back of her shop with
her chin in her hands, studying the
message of her husband’s eyes. And
of course, in the great white cube of
the project outside of Tonka,
Oklahoma, everyone left on the
staff watched the pictures trom
Mars almost all the time.

They had plenty of leisure for
that. They didn’t have much else to
do. It was astonishing low empty
the building became as soon as
Roger was out of it.

They had all been rewarded,
from the stock room boys up; a
personal commendation for every-
one from the President, plus a
thirty-day bonus leave and a jump
in grade. Clara Bly used hers to
finish up her long-delayed honey-
moon. Weidner and Freeling took
the time to write a rough draft of
Brad’s paper, transmitting every
paragraph to him in orbit as it
came off their typewriters and
receiving his corrections via Gold-
stone. Vern Scanyon, of course, had
a hero’s tour with the President, in
fifty-four states and the principal
cities of twenty foreign countries.
Brenda Hartnett had appeared on
television twice with her kids. They
had been deluged with gifts. The
widow of the man who had died to
put Roger Torraway on Mars was
now a millionaire. They had all had

their hour of fame, as soon as the
launch got off and Roger was en
route, especially in those moments
just before the landing.

Then the world looked out at
Mars through the eyes of Roger,
and the senses of the brother on
Roger’s back, and all their fame
blew away. From then on it was all
Roger.

We watched too.

We saw Brad and Don Kayman
in their suits, completing the
pre-egress drill. Roger had no need
of a suit. He stood on tiptoe at the
door of the lander, poised, sniffed
the empty wind, his great black
wings hovering behind him and
soaking in the rays of the discon-
certingly tiny, but disconcertingly
bright, sun. Through the TV
pickup inside the lander we saw
Roger silhouetted against the dull
beige and brown of the abrupt
Martian horizon ....

And then through Roger’s eyes
we saw what he saw.

To Roger, looking out on the
bright, jewel-like colors of the
planet he was meant to live on, it
was a fairyland, beautiful and
inviting.

The lander had stretched out
skeletal magnesium steps to stroke
the surface of Mars, but Roger
didn’t need them. He jumped
down, the wings fluttering — for
balance, not for lift — and landed

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

lightly on the chalky orange
surface, where the wash of the
landing rockets had scoured away
the crust. He stood there for a
moment, surveying his kingdom
with the great faceted eyes. “Don’t
rush things,” advised a voice in his
head that came from Don
Kayman’s suit radio. “Better go
through the exercise list.”

Roger grinned without looking
around. “Sure,” he said, and began
to move away. First he walked, then
trotted, then he began to run. If he
had sped through the streets of
Tonka, here he was a blur. He
laughed out loud. He changed the
frequency responses of his eyes, and
the distant towering hills flashed
bright blue, the flat plain a mosaic
of greens and yellows and reds.
“This is great!” he whispered, and
the receivers at the lander picked
up the subspoken words and passed
them on to Earth.

“Roger,” said Brad petulantly,
“I wish you’d take it easy until we
get the jeep ready.”

Roger turned. The other two
were back at the steps of the lander,
deploying the Mars vehicle from its
fold-down condition behind its
hatch.

He bounded back toward them
joyously. “Need help?”

They didn’t have to answer.
They did need help; in their suits it
was a major undertaking to slip the
retaining strap off one of the

basketwork wheels. “Move over,”
he said, and quickly freed the
wheels and stretched the stilted legs
into stand-by position. The jeep
had both: wheels for the flat parts,
stilts for climbing. It was meant to
be the most flexible vehicle man
could make for getting around
Mars, but it wasn’t. Roger was.
When it was done he touched them
and promised, “I won’t go out of
line of sight.” And then he was
gone, off to see the patches of color
around a series of hummocks,
Dali-bright and irresistible.

“That’s dangerous!” Brad
grumbled over the radio. “Wait till
we finish testing the jeep! If
anything happens to you, we’re in
trouble.”

“Nothing will,” said Roger,
“and no!” He couldn’t wait. He was
using’ his body for what it had been
built to do, and patience was gone.
He ran. He jumped. He found
himself a mile from the lander
before he knew it; looked back, saw
that they were creeping slowly after
him and went on. His oxygenation
system stepped up the pump-rate to
compensate for the extra demands;
his muscles met the challenge
smoothly. It was not his muscles
that propelled him but the
servo-systems that had been built in
instead; but it was the tiny muscles
at the ends of the nerves that
ordered the servos. All the practice
paid off. It was no effort at all to

MAN PLUS

reach a hundred miles an hour,
leaping over small cracks and
craters, bounding up and down the
slopes of larger ones.

“Come back, Roger!” It was
Don Kayman, sounding worried.

-A pause, while Roger ran on;
then a dizzying sense of movement
in his vision, and another voice
said:

“Go back, Roger! It’s time.”

He stopped flatfooted, skidded,
flailed with his wings against the
almost indetectable air, almost fell
and caught himself. The familiar
voice chuckled, “Come on, honey!
Be a good boy and go back now.”

Dorrie’s voice.

And out of the distant thin
whirl of drifting sand the colors
coalesced into the shape of Dorrie
to match the voice of Dorrie,
smiling, not ten yards away, long
legs disappearing into shorts, a gay
halter for a top, her hair blown in
the breeze.

The radio voice in his head
laughed, this time in the tones of
Don Kayman. “Surprised you,
didn’t we?” he demanded.

It took a moment for Roger to
reply. “Yeah,” he managed.

“It was Brad’s idea. We taped
Dorrie back on Earth. When you
need an emergency signal, Dorrie
will give it to you.”

“Yeah,” said Roger again. As
he stared, the smiling figure turned
wispy, the colors faded and it

disappeared.

He turned and went back. The
return trip took a lot longer than
the joyous outbound run, and the
colors were ho longer quite so
bright.

Don Kayman drove the jeep
steadily toward the trudging shape
of Roger Torraway, trying to get the
hang of staying in the plunging seat
without being thrown back and
forth into the restraining belts. It
was in no way comfortable. The suit
that had been tailored to his body
had developed tight spots and loose
ones in the long months up from
Earth — or maybe, he reminded
himself fairly, he was the one who
had swelled a little in some places
and shrunk in others — he had not,
he conceded, been wholly diligent
about his exercises. Also he had to
go to the bathroom. There was
relief plumbing in the suit. He
knew how to use it, but he didn’t
want to.

Above the discomfort was an
overlay of envy and worry. The envy
was a sin that he could purge
himself of, whenever he could find
someone to hear his confession — a
venal sin at most, he thought,
considering the manifest advan-
tages Roger had over the other two.
Worry was a worse sin, not against
his God but against the success of
the mission. It was too late to
worry. Maybe it had been a mistake

100

to set up the simulation of Roger’s
wife to punch home urgent
messages — at the time, he hadn’t
known quite how complicated
Roger’s feelings were about Dorrie.
But it was too late to do anything
about it.

Brad didn’t seem to have any
worries. He was chuckling fondly
over Roger’s performance. “Did
you notice?’’ he was demanding.
“Didn’t fall once! Perfect coordina-
tion. Normative match, bio and
servo. I tell you, Don, we’ve got it
knocked!’’

“It’s a little early to tell,’’
Kayman said uneasily, but Brad
went on. Kayman thought of
turning off the voice in his suit
helmet, but it was almost as easy to
turn off his attention. He looked
around him. They had landed near
the sunrise terminator, but they
had used more than half the
Martian day in pre-exit check and
in putting the jeep together. It was
becoming late afternoon. They
would have to be back before it was
dark, he told himself; Roger would
be able to navigate by starlight, but
it would be chancier for Brad and
himself. Maybe some other time,
after they had had the practice ....
He really wanted that very much, to
stroll the ebony surface of a
Barsoomian night, with the stars
pinpoints of colored fire in a velvet
black sky. But not yet.

They were on a great cratered

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

plain. The size was hard to estimate
at first. Looking around through
his faceplate, Kayman had trouble
remembering how far away the
mountains were. His mind knew,
because he knew every grid-square
of the Martian maps for a hundred
miles around their impact point.
But his senses were deceived by the
absolutely transparent visibility.
The mountains to the west, he was
aware, were forty miles away and
nearly six miles high. They looked
like nearby foothills.

He clutched the jeep down and
stopped it; they were within a few
yards of Roger. Brad fumbled
himself free and slid clumsily out of
the seat, lurching in an ungainly
slow gait over toward Roger to
study him. “Everything all right?’’
he said anxiously. “Of course it is; I
can see that. How’s your balance?
Close your eyes, will you — I mean,
you know, shut off your vision.” He
peered anxiously at the faceted
hemispheres. “Did you? I can’t tell,
you know.”

“I did,” said Roger through the
radio in his head.

“Great! No sense of dizziness,
eh. No trouble keeping your
balance? Keeping your eyes clos-
ed,” he went on, circling Roger and
staring at him from all angles,
“swing your arms up and down a
few times — fine! Now windmill
them, opposite directions — ”
Kayman couldn’t see his face, but

MAN PLUS

101

he could hear the broad grin in the
tone of Brad’s voice. “Beautiful,
Roger! Optimal all the way!”

“My congratulations to you
both,” said Kayman, out of the
vehicle and watching the perfor-
mance. “Roger?”

The head turned toward him,
and though there was nothing
about the appearance of the eyes
that changed, Kayman knew Roger
was looking at him. “I only wanted
to say,” he went on, not quite sure
where the sentence was going to go,
“that I’m — well. I’m sorry we
sprang that bit about using
Dorrie’s image to convey messages
on you. I have a feeling we’ve given
you too many surprises.”

“It’s all right, Don.” The
trouble with Roger’s voice, Kayman
reflected again, was that you
couldn’t tell much from its tone.

“Having said that much,” he
said, “I think I ought to tell you
that we do have another surprise
for you. A pleasant one, I think.
Sulie Carpenter’s following us up
here. Her ship should arrive in
about five weeks.”

Silence, and no expression.
“Why,” said Roger at last, “that’s
very nice. She’s a fine person.”

“Yes.” But the conversation
didn’t seem to have anywhere to go
after that, and besides Brad was
impatient to put Roger through a
whole bending and stretching
series. Kayrnan allowed himself the

privileges of a tourist. He turned
away, staring toward the distant
niountains, squinted at the bright
sun, which even the auto-darkening
of his faceplate didn’t make quite
comfortable, then looked around
him. Clumsily he managed to kneel
and to scoop up a clutch of pebbly
dirt in his gloved hand. It would be
his job next day to start the
systematic collection of samples to
return to Earth that was one minor
task of the mission; even after half
a dozen manned landings and
nearly forty instrumented missions,
there was still an insatiable demand
for samples of Martian soil in the
laboratories of Earth. Right now,
however, he was allowing himself to
daydream. There was plenty of
limonite in this sand, and the
quartz pebbles were far from
round; the edges were not sharp,
but neither had they been milled to
roundness. He scraped into the soil.

A yellowish powder rested on top;
underneath it the material was
darker and coarser. There were
shiny specks, almost like glass.
Quartz? he wondered, and idly
scooped around one.

He froze, his hands cupping an
irregular rounded blob of crystal.

It had a stem. A stem that
thrust down into the ground. That
spread and divided into dark,
rough-surfaced tendrils.

Roots.

Don Kayman jumped up.

102

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

whirling on Roger and Brad.
“Look!” he shouted, the object
plucked free in his gauntleted
hand. “Dear God in Heaven, look
at this!”

And Roger, coming up out of a
crouch, spun and leaped at him.
One hand knocked the glittering
crystal thing spinning fifty yards
into the air, bending the metal of
the gauntlet. Kayman felt a sharp,
quick pain in that forearm and saw
the other hand striking toward his
faceplate like the claw of an angry
Kodiak bear; and that was the last
he saw.

Chapter Sixteen
On the Perception of Perils

Vern Scanyon parked his car
any-which-way across the painted
yellow lines that marked his own
place, jumped out and held his
thumb against the elevator button.
He had been awake less than forty
minutes, but he was not at all
sleepy. What he was was angry and
apprehensive. The President’s ap-
pointments secretary had waked
him out of a sound sleep with a
phone call to say that the President
had diverted his flight to stop at
Tonka — “to discuss the problems
of the perceptual system of
Commander Torraway.” To kick
ass, more accurately. Scanyon had
not known anything about Roger’s
sudden attack on Don Kayman

until he was in his car, hastening to
the project building to meet the
President.

“Morning, Vern.” Jonny Free-
ling looked scared and angry, too.
Scanyon brushed past him into his
own office.

“Come on in,” he barked.
“Now, in words of one syllable.
What happened?”

Freeling said resentfully, “It’s
not my responsibility to — ”

‘‘Freeling.’’

“Roger’s systems overreacted a
little. Apparently Kayman moved
suddenly, and the simulations
systems translated it into a threat;
Roger defended himself and
pushed Kayman away.”

Scanyon stared.

“Broke his arm,” Freeling
amended. “It was only a simple
fracture. General. No complica-
tions. It’s splinted, it’ll heal
perfectly — he just has to get by
with one functioning arm for a
while. It’s a pity for Don Kayman,
of course — ”

“Fuck Kayman! Why didn’t he
know how to act around Roger?”

“Well, he did know. He found
something that he thought was
indigenous life! That was pretty
exciting. All he wanted to do was
show it to Roger.”

“Life?” Scanyon’s eyes looked
more hopeful.

“Some sort of plant, they
think.”

MAN PLUS

103

“Can’t they tell?”

“Well, Roger seems to have
knocked it out of Kayman’s hand.
Brad went looking for it afterward,
but he couldn’t find it.”

“Jesus,” Scanyon snorted.
“Freeling, tell me one thing. What
kind of incompetents have we got
working for us?” It was not a
question that had a proper answer,
and Scanyon didn’t wait for one.
“In about twenty minutes,” he
said, “the President of the United
States is going to come through
that door and he!s going to want to
know line by line what happened
and why. I don't know what he’s
going to ask, but whatever it is,
there’s one answer I don’t want to
give him, and that’s ‘I don’t know.’
So tell me, Freeling. Tell me all
over again what happened, why it
went wrong, why we didn’t think it
would go wrong and how we can be
damn sure it isn’t going to go wrong
again ....’’It took a little more than
twenty minutes, but then they had
more; the President’s plane touch-
ed down late, and by the time Dash
arrived, Scanyon was as ready as he
knew how to be. Even ready for the
fury in the President’s face.

“Scanyon,” he snapped at once,
“I warned you, no more surprises.
This time is one too many, and I
think I’m going to have to have
your ass.”

“You can’t put a man on Mars
without risks, Mr. President!”

Dash stared eye to eye for a
moment, then said, “Maybe.
What’s the priest’s condition?”

“He’s got a broken radius, but
it’s going to be all right. There’s
something more important than
that. He thinks he found life on
Mars, Mr. President!”

Dash shook his head. “I know,
some kind of plant. But he
managed to lose it.”

“For the moment. Kayman’s a
good man. If he said he found
something important, he did. He’ll
find it again.”

“I certainly hope so, Vern.
Don’t slide away fi-om this. Why
did this thing happen?”

“A slight overcontrol of his
perceptual systems. That’s it, Mr.
President, and that’s all it is. In
order to make him respond quickly
and positively, we had to build in
some simulation features. To get
his attention to priority messages,
he sees his wife speaking to him. To
get him to react to danger, he sees
something frightening. That way
his head can keep up with the
reflexes we built into his body.
Otherwise, he’d go crazy.”

“Breaking the priest’s arm
wasn’t crazy?”

“No! It was an accident. When
Kayman jumped at him he
interpreted it as an actual attack of
some kind. He responded. Well,
Mr. President, in this case it was
wrong, and it cost us a broken arm.

104

but suppose there had been a real
threat? Any kind of a threat! He
would have met it. Whatever it was!
He’s invulnerable, Mr. President.
Nothing can ever catch him off
guard.”

“Yeah,” said the President, and
after a moment, “maybe so.” He
stared over Scanyon’s head for a
moment and said, “What about
this other crap?”

“Which crap, Mr. President?”

Dash shrugged irritably. “As I
understand it, there’s something
wrong with all our computer
projections, especially the polls we
took.”

Alarm bells went off in
Scanyon’s head. He said reluctant-
ly, “Mr. President, there’s a lot of
paper on my desk I haven’t got
through yet. You know I’ve been
traveling a lot — ”

“Scanyon,” said the President,
“I’m going now. Before you do
anything else, I want you to take a
look through the papers on your
desk, and find that paper, and read
it. Tomorrow morning, eight
o’clock, I want you in my office,
and then I want to know what’s
happening, specifically three
things. First, I want to hear that
Kayman’s all right. Second, I want
that living thing found. Third, I
want to know the score on the
computer projections, and it better
be all right. So long, Scanyon. I
know it’s only five in the morning.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
but don’t go back to bed.”

By then we could have
reassured Scanyon and the Presi-
dent about one thing. The object
Kayman had picked up was indeed
some form of life. We had
reconstructed the sampled data
through Roger’s eyes, filtered out
the simulations, and seen what he
had seen. It had not yet occurred to
the President or his advisors that
that could be done, but it would. It
was not possible to make out fine
details, because of the limited
number of bits available, but the
object was shaped rather like an
artichoke, coarse leaves pointed
upward, and a little like a
mushroom: there was a crystalline
cap of transparent material over it.
It possessed roots, and unless it was
an artifact (point zero zero one
probability, at most) it had to be a
form of life. We did not find that
very interesting except, of course,
as it would reinforce general
interest in the Mars project itself.
As to the doubt cast on the
computer simulations, we were
considerably more interested. We
had followed that development for
some time, ever since the graduate
student named Byrne had written a
Systems-360 program to recheck
his desk-calculator previous re-
check of some of the poll results.
We were as concerned about it as
the President was. But the

MAN PLUS

105

probability of any serious conse-
quence there too appeared quite
small, especially since everything
else was going well. The MHD
generator was almost ready for
pre-orbit injection course correc-
tions; we had selected an installa-
tion site for it in the crater called
Voltaire on the moon, Deimos. Not
far behind it was the vehicle that
contained the 3070 and its human
crew of two, including Sulie
Carpenter. And on Mars itself they
had already begun construction of
permanent installations. They were
a little behind schedule. Kayman’s
accident had slowed them down,
not only because of what it did to
him but because of what Brad then
insisted on doing to Roger:
field-stripping his shoulder-pack
computer to test for glitches. There
weren’t any. But it took two
Martian days to be sure; and then,
because Kayman begged, they took
time to find his life form. They
found it, or not it, exactly, but
dozens of other specimens of the
same thing; and Brad and Roger
left Kayman inside the lander to
study it while they began building
their domes.

The first step was to find an
area of Mars which had suitable
geology. The surface should be as
much like soil as possible, but solid
rock had to be not far below. It
took half a day of pounding
explosive spikes into the ground

and listening to echoes to be sure
they had that.

Then, laboriously, the solar
generators were spread out, and the
subsurface rock-bound water was
boiled out. As the first tiny plume
of steam appeared at the lip of the
pipe, they cheered. It would have
been easy to miss it. The utterly dry
Martian air snatched every mole-
cule up almost as soon as it left the
pipe. But by leaning close to the
valve at the end, one could see a
faint, irregular misting that distort-
ed shapes beyond it. It was water
vapor, all right.

The next step was to spread out
three great stretches of monomole-
cular film, the smallest first, the
largest on top, and seal the topmost
to the ground all around its
periphery. Then they carried the
pumps out to the basket-wheeled
vehicle and started them going. The
Martian atmosphere was extremely
thin, but it was there; the pumps
would ultimately fill the domes,
partly with the compressed carbon
dioxide and nitrogen from the
atmosphere, partly with the water
vapor they were boiling out of the
rock. There was, to be sure, no
oxygen to speak of in any of that,
but they didn’t have to find oxygen;
they would make it, in exactly the
same way Earth made its oxygen:
through the intercession of photo-
synthetic plants.

It would take four or five days

106

for the outer dome to fill to its
planned half pound of pressure.
Then they would start filling the
second one, up to about a pound
and a half (which would increase
the pressure in the diminishing
space of the outer shell to about a
full pound). Then, finally, they
would fill the inner dome to four
pounds, and so they would have an
environment in which people could
live without pressure suits, and
even breathe, as soon as the crops
gave them breathing material.

Of course, Roger didn’t need
any of that. He didn’t need the
oxygen; he didn’t even need the
plants for food, or not much and
not for a long time. He could stay,
perhaps, forever living off the
unfailing light of the sun for most
of his evergy, plus what would be
microwaved down from the MHD
generator once it was in place.
What was needed for the minuscule
remaining part of him which was
raw animal could easily be supplied
by the concentrated foods from the
ship for a long time; and only then,
after perhaps a couple of Martian
years, would he have to begin to
depend on what came out of the
hydroponics tanks and the seeds
they were already sprouting in
sealed cold-frames under the
canopies.

It all took several days, since
Kayman wasn’t a great deal of
help. Getting in and out of a

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

pressure suit was agony for him. So
they left him in the lander most of
the time. When it came time to lug
the tanks of carefully hoarded
sludge from their toilet facilities
over to the dome, Kayman lent a
hand. “Exactly one hand,” he said,
trying to handle the magnesium-
shafted rake by wrapping his good
arm around it.

“You’re doing fine,” Brad
encouraged. There was enough
pressure in the innermost dome
now to lift it above their heads, but
not quite enough to let them take
off their pressure suits. Which was
just as well. Brad realized; this way
they couldn’t smell what they were
raking into the sterile soil.

By the time the dome was fully
extended, the pressure was up to a
hundred millibars. This is the
pressure of Earth’s atmosphere at
some ten miles above sea level. It is
not an environment in which naked
man can survive and work for very
long, but it is an environment in
which he will only die if somehing
kills him. Half that pressure would
be lethal instantly; his body
temperature would boil his fluids
away.

But when the internal pressure
hit the 100-millibar level, all three
of them crowded through the three
successive airlocks, and Brad and
Don Kayman ceremoniously took
off their pressure suits. They fitted
nosepieces, something like those of

MAN PLUS

107

an aqualung, in place for breath-
ing; there was still no oxygen to
speak of inside the dome. But they
got pure oxygen from the tanks on
their backs, and with that they
were, for the first time, almost as
free as Roger, inside a transplanted
bit of earth that was three hundred
feet across and as tall as a ten-story
building.

And inside it, in orderly rows,
the seeds they had transplanted
were already beginning to sprout
and grow.

Meanwhile —

The vehicle with the magneto-
hydrodynamic generator attained
Mars orbit and, with General
Hesburg helping, matched orbit
with Deimos and nestled into the
crater. It was a perfect coupling.
The vehicle swung out its struts to
touch the rock of the moon and
augured them in, and locked. A
brief jet from the maneuvering
system tested its stability: it was
now a part of Deimos. The power
system began to sequence toward
full operational mode. A fusion
flame woke the plasma fires. Radar
reached out to find the target on
the lander, then locked on to the
dome. Power began to flow. The
energy density of the field was low
enough for Brad and Kayman to
walk around in it unaware, and to
Roger it was like the basking
warmth of sunlight, but the foil

strips in the outer dome gathered
the microwave energy and chan-
neled it to the pumps, the batteries.

The fusion fuel had a life of fifty
years. For that long at least, there
would be energy for Roger and his
backpack computer on Mars,
whatever happened on Earth.

And meanwhile —

There were other couplings.

In the long spiral up from
Earth, Sulie Carpenter and her
pilot, Dinty Mejghan, had had time
heavy on their hands and had
found a way to use it.

The act of copulation in free fall
presents certain problems. First
Sulie had to buckle one strand of
webbing around her waist; then
Dinty embraced her with his arms,
and she him with her legs. Their
motions were underwater-slow. It
took Sulie a long, gentle, dreamy
time to come to orgasm, and Dinty
was even slower. When they were
finished they were hardly even
breathing hard. Sulie stretched and
yawned, arching her belly against
the retaining strap. “Nice,” she
said drowsily. “I’ll remember
that.”

“We both will, honey,” he said,
misunderstanding her. “I think
that’s the best way we screw. Next
time — ”

She shook her head to interrupt
him. “No next time, Dinty dear.
That was it.”

108

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

He pulled his head back to look
at her. “What?”

She smiled. Her right eye was
still only inches from his left, and
their view of each other curiously
foreshortened. She craned forward
and rubbed her cheek gently
against his bristly one.

He scowled and detached
himself, suddenly feeling naked
where before he had been only
bare. He pulled his shorts out from
behind the handhold where he had
cached them and slid into them.

“Sulie, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. We’re
almost ready for orbit, that’s all.”

He pushed himself backward
across the cramped compartment
to get a better look at her. She was
worth looking at. Her hair had gone
back to muddy blonde and her eyes
were brown without the contact
lenses: and even after almost two
hundred days of never being more
than ten yards from him, she still
looked good to Dinty Meighan.

“I didn’t think you had any
surprises left,” he marveled.

“You never can tell about a
woman.”

“Come on, Suliel What’s this
all about? You sound as though
you’ve been planning — Heyl” A
thought struck him. “You volun-
teered for this mission — not to go
to Mars, but to go to some guy!
Right? One of the guys ahead of
us?”

“You’re very quick, Dinty.
Not,” she said fondly, “where I
don’t want you to be, though.”

“Who is it. Brad? Hesburgh?
Not the priest? — oh, wait a
minute!” He nodded. “Sure! The
one you were mixed up with back
on Earth. The Cyborg!”

“Colonel Roger Torraway, the
human being,” she corrected. “As
human as you are, except for some
improvements.”

He laughed, more resentment
then humor. “A lot of improvement
and no balls at all.”

Sulie unstrapped herself. “Din-
ty,” she said sweetly, “I’ve enjoyed
sex with you, and I respect you, and
you’ve been about as comfortable
to be with as any human being
possibly could be on this God-
damned eternity trip. But there are
some things I don’t want you to say.
You’re right. Roger doesn’t happen
to have any testicles, right at this
exact moment. But he’s a human
being I can respect and love, and
he’s the only one like that I’ve
found lately. Believe me. I’ve
looked.”

“Thanks!”

“Oh, don’t do this, dear Dinty.
You know you’re not really jealous.
You’ve already got a wife.”

“Next year I do! That’s a long
way off.” She shrugged, grinning.
“Ah, but Sulie! There are some
things you can’t kid me about. You
love screwing!”

MAN PLUS

109

“I like body contact and
intimacy,” she corrected, “and I
like coming to orgasm. I like both
those things better with someone I
love, Dinty. No offense.”

He scowled. “You’ve got a long
wait, sweetie.”

“Maybe not.”

“The hell you say. I won’t see
Irene for seven months. But you —
you won’t be back any faster than I
will, and then it only begins.
They’ve got to put him back
together for you. Assuming they
can put him back together. It
sounds like a long time between
fucks.”

“Oh, Dinty. Don’t you think
I’ve thought this all out?” She
patted him in passing, on the way
to her own locker. “Sex isn’t just
coitus. There are more ways to
orgasm than with a penis in my
vagina. And there’s more to sex
than orgasm. Not to mention love.
Roger,” she went on, wriggling into
her jumpsuit, not so much for
modesty as for pockets, “is a
resourceful, loving person, and so
am I. We’ll make out — anyway,
until the rest of the colonists land.”

“Rest?” he struggled. “Rest of
the colonists?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?
I’m not going back with all of you,
Dinty, and I don’t think Roger is
either. We’re going to be Mar-
tians!”

And meanwhile, in the Oval
Room of the White House, the
President of the United States was
confronting Vern Scanyon and a
young, coffee-colored man with
tinted glasses and the build of a
football player. “So you’re the
one,” he said, appraising him.
“You think we don’t know how to
run a computer study.”

“No, Mr. President,” the young
man said steadily. “I don’t think
that’s the problem.”

Scanyon coughed. “Byrne
here,” he said, “is a graduate
student on work-study from M.I.T.
His thesis is on sampling method-
ology, and we gave him access to
some of the, ah, classified material.
Especially public-opinion studies
about attitudes on the project.”

“But not to a computer,” Byrne
said.

“Not to a big one,” Scanyon
corrected. “You had your own desk
dataplex.”

The President said mildly, “Get
on with it, Scanyon.”

“Well, his results came out
different. According to his interpre-
tations, the public opinion on the
whole question of colonizing Mars
was, well, apathy. You remember,
Mr. President, there was some
question about the results at the
time? The raw results weren’t
encouraging at all? But when we
played them through analysis, they
came out positive to, what do you

110

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

call it, two sigmas. I never knew
why.”

“Did you check?”

“Certainly, Mr. President! Not
me,” Scanyon added quickly; “that
wasn’t my responsibility. But I’m
satisfied that the studies were
verified.”

Byrne put in, “Three different
times, with three different pro-
grams. There were minor varia-
tions, of course. But they all came
out significant and reliable. Only
when I repeated them on my desk
machine, they didn’t. And that’s
the way it is, Mr. President. If you
work up the figures on any big
computer in the net, you get one
result. If you work them up on a
small machine isolated, you get
another.”

The President drummed the
balls of his thumbs on the desk.
“What’s your conclusion?”

Byrne shrugged. He was twenty-
three years old, and his surround-
ings intimidated him. He looked to
Scanyon for help and found none;
he said, “You’ll have to ask
somebody else that one, Mr.
President. I can only give you my
own conjecture. Somebody’s bug-
gering our computer network.”

The President rubbed the left
lobe of his nose reflectively,
nodding slowly. He looked at Byrne
for a moment and said, without
raising his voice, “Carousso, come
on in here. Mr. Byrne, what you see

and hear in this room is top secret.
When you leave, Mr. Carousso will
see that you are informed as to
what that means to you in detail;
basically, you are not to talk about
it. To anyone. Ever.”

The door to the President’s
anteroom opened and a tall, solid
man with a self-effacing air walked
in. Byrne stared at him wonder-
ingly: Charles Carousso, the head
of the C.I.A.! “What about it.
Chuck?” the President asked.
“What about him?”

“We’ve checked Mr. Byrne, of
course,” said the agency man. His
words were precise and uninflected.
“There isn’t anything significant
adverse to him — you’ll be glad to
know, I suppose, Mr. Byrne. And
what he says checks out. It isn’t
only the public-opinion surveys.
The war-risk projections, the
cost/ effectiveness studies — run on
the net, they come out one way; run
on independent calculating ma-
chines, they come out another. I
agree with Mr. Byrne. Our com-
puter net has been compromised.”

The President’s lips were
pressed together, as though he were
holding back what he wanted to
say. All he allowed to come out was,
“I want you to find out how this
happened. Chuck. But the question
now is, who? The Asians?”

“No, sir! We checked that out.
It’s impossible.”

“Bullshit it’s impossible!’’

MAN PLUS

111

roared the President. “We know
they already did tap our lines once,
on the simulation of Roger
Torraway’s systems!”

“Mr. President, that’s an
entirely different case. We found
that tap and neutralized it. It was
in the groundlines cable on a
nonsensitive linkage. The comm
circuits on our major machines are
absolutely leakproof.” He glanced
at Byrne. “You have a report on the
techniques involved, Mr. President;
I’ll be glad to go over it with you at
another time.” ^

“Oh, don’t worry about me,”
said Byrne, smiling for the first
time. “Everybody knows the links
are multiply scrambled. If you’ve
checked me out. I’m sure you found
out that a lot of us graduate
students fool around trying to tap
in, and none of us make it.”

The agency man nodded. “As a
matter of fact, Mr. President, we
tolerate that; it’s good field-testing
for our security. If people like Mr.
Byrne can’t think up a way past the
blocks, I doubt the Asians can. And
the blocks are leakproof. They have
to be. They control circuits that go
to the War Machine in Butte, the
Census Bureau, UNESCO — ”

“Wait a minute!” barked the
president. “Our machines tie in
with UNESCO, which the Asians
use, and the War Machine?”

“There is absolutely no pos-
sibility of a leak.”

“There’s been a leak, Carous-
so!”

“Not to the Asians, Mr.
President.”

“You just finished telling me
there’s one wire that goes out of our
machine to the War Machine and
another that goes straight to the
Asians, with a detour through
UNESCO!”

“Even so, Mr. President, I
absolutely guarantee it’s not the
Asians. We would know that. All
major computers are cross-linked
to some extent. That’s like saying
there’s a road from everywhere to
everywhere else. Right, there is. But
there are roadblocks. There is no
way the NPA can get access to the
War Machine, or to most of these
studies. Even so, if they had done it,
we would know from covert
sources. They haven’t. And,” he
went on, “in any case, Mr.
President, can you think of any
reason why the NPA would distort
results in order to compel us to
colonize Mars?”

The President drummed his
thumbs, looking around the room.
At last he sighed.

“I’m willing to go along with
your logic. Chuck. But if it wasn’t
the Asians that buggered our
computers, then who?”

The Agency man was morosely
silent.

“And,” Dash snarled, “for
Christ’s sake, why?”

112

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Chapter Seventeen
A Day in the Life of a Martian

Roger could not see the gentle
shower of microwave energy
coming down from Deimos, but he
could feel it as a luxury of warmth.
When he was nearby he preened his
wings in it, soaking up strength.
Outside the beam, he carried part
of it with him in his accumulators.
There was no reason for him to
hoard his strength now. More
strength poured down from the sky
whenever Deimos was above the
horizon. There were only a few
hours in each day when neither the
sun nor the farther moon were in
the sky, and his storage capacity
was multiply adequate for those
brief periods of drought.

Inside the domes, of course, the
metal-foil antennas stole the energy
before it reached him, and so he
limited his time with Brad and
Kayman. He didn’t mind. It was
what he preferred. Every day the
gap between them widened anyway.
They were going back to their own
planet, and Brad at least had begun
to count the hours. He was going to
stay on his. He had not told them
that, yet, but he had made up his
mind. Earth had begun to seem like
a pleasant, quaint foreign place he
had visited once and hadn’t much
liked. The pains and perils of
terrestrial humanity were no longer
his. Not even when they had been

his own personal pains, and his own
fears.

Inside the dome Brad, wearing
G-string undershorts and a de-
mand tank of oxygen, was happily
planting carrot seedlings between
the stands of Siberian oats. “Want
to give me a hand, Rog?” His voice
was reedily high in the thin
atmosphere; he took frequent sips
of oxygen from the mouthpiece that
hung next to his chin, and then
when he breathed out, the voice was
fractionally deeper, but still
strange.

“No, Don wants me to pick up
some more specimens for him. I’ll
be gone overnight.”

“All right.” Brad was more
interested in his seedlings than in
Torraway, and Torraway was no
longer very interested in Brad.
Sometimes he would remind
himself that this man had been his
wife’s lover, but in order for that to
feel like anything he had to remind
himself that he had a wife. It didn’t
seem worth the effort. More
interesting was the challenge of the
high cupped valley just over that
farther range of hills, and his own
private farm plot. For weeks now he
had been bringing samples of
Martian life back to show Don
Kayman. They were not plentiful
— two or three together in a clump,
perhaps, and nothing else for
hundreds of meters around. But
they were not hard to find. Not for

MAN PLUS

113

him. Once he had learned to
recognize their special color — the
hard UV lengths that their crystal
. caps reflected away from them, to
let them survive in the harsh
radiation environment — it was
reflexive to filter his vision bands to
see only that wavelength in color,
and then they stood out a kilometer
away.

So he had brought back a dozen
of them and then a hundred; there
seemed to be four distinct varieties,
and it was not long before Kayman
asked him to stop. He had all the
samples he needed to study, and
half a dozen more of each in
formalin to bring back to Earth,
and his gentle conserving soul was
uneasy at despoiling the ecology of
Mars. Roger began replanting
some of them near the dome. He
told himself it was to see whether
the overflow of energy beamed
down from the generator did native
life forms any harm.

But what it was, he knew in his
heart, was gardening. It was his
planet, and he was beautifying it
for himself.

He let himself out of the dome,
stretched luxuriously for a moment
in the double warmth of sun and
microwave and checked his bat-
teries. They could use topping off;
he deftly plugged the leads into his
own backpack and the gently
whining accumulator at the base of

the dome and, without looking
toward the lander, said, “I’m going
to take off now, Don.’’

Kayman’s voice responded in-
stantly over the radio. “Don’t be
out of touch more than two hours,
Roger. I don’t want to have to come
looking for you.’’

“You worry too much,’’ said
Roger, detaching the leads and
stowing them away neatly.

“You’re only superhuman,”
grumbled Kayman. “You’re not
God. You could fall, break
something — ”

“I won’t. Brad? So long.”

Inside the triple dome Brad
looked up over the armpit-high
stalks of wheat and waved. His
features could not be made out
through the filmy domes; the
plastic had been formulated to cut
out the worst of the UV, and it
blurred some of the visual
wavelengths as well. But Roger
could see his wave. “Take care.
Give us a call before you go out of
line of sight, so we’ll know when to
start worrying.”

“Yes, mother.” It was curious,
Roger reflected. He was actually
feeling rather fond of Brad. The
situation interested him as an
abstract problem. Was it because
he was a gelding? There was
testosterone circulating in his
system; the steroid implant they
had given him took care of that. His

114

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

dreams were sometimes sexual, and
sometimes of Dorrie; but the
hollow despair and the anger he
had lived with on Earth had
attenuated on Mars.

He was already half a mile from
the dome, running along easily in
the warm sunlight, each step
coming down precisely where it
would find secure footing and each
thrust lifting him surely an exact
distance up and ahead. His vision
was on low-energy surveillance
mode, taking in everything in a
moving teardrop shape whose point
was where he was and whose lobe,
fifty yards across, was more than a
hundred meters in front of him. He
was not unaware of the rest of the
landscape. If something unusual
had appeared, above all if
something had moved, he would
have seen it at once. But it did not
distract him from his musings. He
tried to remember what sex with
Dorrie had been like. It was not
hard to recall the objective,
physical parameters. Much harder
to feel what he had felt in bed with
her; it was like trying to recall the
sensuous joy of a chocolate malted
when he was eleven, or his first
marijuana high at fifteen. It was
easier to feel something about Sulie
Carpenter, although as far as he
could remember he had never
touched any part of her but her
fingertips, and then by accident.
(Of course, she had touched every

part of him ....) He had been
thinking, from time to time, about
Suite’s coming to Mars. It had
seemed threatening at first. Then it
had seemed interesting, a change to
look forward to. Now — Now,
Roger realized, he wanted it to
happen soon, not in four days,
when she was due to land after her
pilot completed the on-site tests of
the 3070 and the MHD generator.
Soon. They had exchanged a few
casual greetings by radio. He
wanted her closer than that. He
wanted to touch her —

His wife’s image formed in front
of him, wearing that same
monotonous sunsuit. “Better check
in, honey,’’ she said.

Roger stopped and looked
around, on full vision mode in the
Earth-normal spectrum.

He was almost halfway to the
mountains, a good ten kilometers
from the dome and the lander. He
had been going uphill, and the flat
terrain had begun to be rolling; he
could barely see the top of the
dome, and the tip of the antennas
of the lander was a tiny spike
beyond it. Without conscious effort
his wings deployed themselves
behind him to make his radio
signal more directional, as a
shouting man might megaphone
his hands around his mouth.
“Everything’s okay,’’ he said, and
Don Kayman’s voiee answered
inside his head:

MAN PLUS

115

“That’s fine, Roger. It’ll be
dark in three hours.’’

“I know.” And after dark the
temperature would plummet; six
hours from now it might touch a
hundred and fifty degrees below
zero. But Roger had been out in the
dark before, and all of his systems
had performed beautifully. “Fll
check with you again when I’m
high enough on a slope to reach
you,” he promised, turned and
started once more toward the
mountains. The atmosphere was
hazier than it had been. He allowed
himself to feel his skin receptors
and realized that there was a
growing Wind. Sandstorm? He had
lived through them, too; if it got
bad he would hedgehog somewhere
until it stopped, but it would have
to be very bad to make that
necessary. He grinned inside
himself — he had not reliably
learned how to do it with his new
face — and loped on ....

At sunset he was in the shadow
of the mountains, high enough up
to see the dome clearly, more than
20 kilometers away.

The sandstorm was all below
him now and seemed to be moving
away. He had stopped briefly twice
and waited, wings furled around
him. But that had been only routine
caution; at no time had it been
more than an annoyance. He
cupped the wings behind him and
said through his radio:

“Don? Brad? It’s your wander-
ing boy reporting in.”

The reply inside his head when
it came, was scratchy and distorted,
an unpleasant feeling, like gritting
one’s teeth on emery cloth. “Your
signal’s lousy, Rog. Are you okay?”

“Sure.” But he hesitated. The
static from the stonn was bad
enough so that he had not been
sure, at first, which of his
companions was talking to him;
only after a moment had he
identified the voice as Brad’s.
“Maybe I’ll start back now,” he
said.

The other voice, even more
distorted: “You’ll make an old
priest happy if you do, Roger. Want
us to come out and meet you?”

“Hell, no. I can move faster
than you can. Go to sleep; I’ll see
you in four or five hours.”

Roger chatted a moment, than
sat down and looked around. He
wasn’t tired. He had almost
forgotten what it was like to be
tired; he slept an hour or two, most
nights, and napped from time to
time during the day, more out of
boredom than fatigue. The organic
part of him still imposed some
demands on his metabolism, but
the crushing bone-weariness of
prolonged exertion was no longer
part of his experience. He sat
because it pleased him to sit on ah
outcropping of rock and stare
across the valley of his home. The

116

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

long shadow of the mountains had
already passed the dome, and only
the peaks on the far side were still
lighted. He could see the termina-
tor clearly; Mars’s thin air did not
diffuse the shadow much. He could
almost see it move.

Overhead the sky was brilliantly
beautiful. It was easy enough to see
the brighter stars even by daylight,
especially for Roger, but at night
they were fantastic. He could
clearly make out the different hues:
steel-blue Sirius, bloody Aldebaran,
the smoky gold of Polaris. By
expanding his visible spectrum into
the infrared and ultraviolet he
could see new, bright stars whose
names he did not know; perhaps
they had no common names, since
apart from himself they had been
seen as bright objects only by
astronomers using special plates.
He pondered about the question of
name-giving rights; if he was the
only one who could see that bright
patch there in Orion, did he have
the right to christen it? Would
anybody object if he called it
“Sulie’s Star?”

For that matter, he could see
what was, for the moment, Sulie’s
actual star ... or heavenly body;
Deimos was not a star, of course.
He stared up at it and amused
himself trying to imagine Sulie’s
face —

“ROGER, HONEY! YOU — ”

Torraway jumped straight up

and landed a meter away. The
scream inside his head had been
deafening. Had it been real? He
had no way to tell; the voices from
Brad or Don Kayman and the
simulated voice of his wife sounded
equally familiar inside his head. He
was not even sure whose voice it
had been — Dorrie’s? But he had
been thinking about Sulie Carpen-
ter, and the voice had been so
queerly stressed that it could have
been either, or neither of them.

And now there was no sound at
all, or none except for the irregular
clicks, squeaks and scrapes that
came up from the rock as the
Martian crust responded to the
rapidly dropping temperature. He
was not aware of the cold as cold;
his internal heaters kept the feeling
part of him at constant tempera-
ture and would go on doing so
easily all through the night. But he
knew that it was at least fifty below
now.

Another blast:

“ROG -- THINK YOU
OUGHT — ”

Even with the warning of the
time before, the raucous shout was
painful. This time he caught a
quick fugitive glimpse of Dorrie’s
simulated image, standing queerly
on nothing at all a dozen meters in
the air.

Training took over. Roger
turned toward the distant dome, or
where he thought it had been.

MAN PLUS

117

cupped his wings behind him and
said clearly:

“Don! Brad! I’ve got some kind
of a malfunction. I’m getting a
signal but I can’t read it.’’

He waited. There was no
response, nothing inside his head
except his own thoughts and a
confused grumbling that he recog-
nized as static.

"ROGER!”

It was Dorrie again, ten times
life-size, towering over him, and on
her face a grimace of wrath and
fear. She seemed to be reaching
down toward him, and then she
bent curiously sidewise, like a
television image flickering off the
tube, and was gone.

Roger felt a peculiar pain, tried
to dismiss it as fear, felt it again
and realized it was cold. There was
something seriously wrong. “May
Day!’’ he shouted. “Don! I’m in
trouble — help me!’’ The dark
distant hills seemed to be rippling
slowly. He looked up. The stars
were turning liquid and dripping
from the sky.

In Don Kayman’s dream, he
and Sister Clotilda were sitting on
hassocks in front of a waterfall,
eating sponges. Not candy; kitchen
sponges, dipped into a sort of
fondue. Clotilda was warning him
of danger. “They’re going to throw
us out,” she said, slicing off a
square of sponge and impaling it on

a two-pronged silver fork, “because
you got a C in homiletics — ”
dipping it in the copper-bottomed
dish over the alcohol flame — “and
you’ve got to, just got to, wake up

He woke up.

Brad was leaning over him.
“Come on, Don. We’ve got to get
out of here.”

“What’s the matter?” Kayman
pulled the sleeping bag over his
chest with his good hand.

“I can’t get an answer out of
Roger. He didn’t answer. I sent him
a priority signal. Then I thought I
heard him on the radio, but very
faint. He’s either out of line of
sight, or his transmitter isn’t
working.”

Kayman wriggled out of the bag
and sat up. At times like this, when
first awakening, his arm hurt the
most, and it was hurting now. He
put it out of his mind. “Have you
got a position fix?”

“Three hours ago. I couldn’t get
a bearing on this last transmis-
sion.”

“He can’t be far off that line.”
Kayman was already sliding into
the legs of his pressure suit. The
next part was the hardest, trying to
ease the splinted forearm into the
sleeve. Among them, they had
managed to stretch it a little,
sealing the beginnings of a rip, but
it was barely possible, would not be
easy even under the best of

118

conditions. Now, trying to hurry, it
was infuriating.

Brad was already in his suit and
throwing equipment into a bag.
“Do you think you’re going to
perform an emergency operation
out there?” Kayman demanded.

Brad scowled and kept on. “I
don’t know what I’ll have to do. It’s
full night, Don, and he’s up at least
a thousand feet. It’s cold.”

Kayman closed his mouth. By
the time he was zipped in. Brad
had long since left the lander and
was waiting at the wheel of the
Mars vehicle. Kayman clambered
aboard painfully, and they were
moving before he had a chance to
belt himself down. He managed to
cling with heels and the one
unbendable arm while buckling
himself in with the other hand, but
it was a close thing. “Any idea of
distance?” he asked.

“In the hills somewhere,” said
Brad’s voice in his ear; Kayman
winced, and turned down the
volume on his radio.

“Maybe two hours?” he gues-
sed, calculating rapidly.

“If he’s already started back,
maybe. If he can’t move — or if
he’s moving around out there, and
we have to try to track him with
RDF — ” The voice stopped. “I
think he’s all right as far as
temperature goes,” Brad went on
after a minute. “But I don’t know. I
don’t know what happened.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Kayman stared ahead. Past the
bright field of light from the
vehicle’s headlight there was
nothing to see, except that the
glittering field of stars was cut off,
like the scalloped edge of a doily, at
the horizon. That was the mountain
ridge. It would be that, Kayman
knew, that Brad was using as a
guide; aiming always at that lowest
point between the double peak on
the north and the very high one just
to the south. Bright Aldebaran was
hanging over that higher peak, a
good enough navigation aid in
itself, at least until it set in an hour
or so.

Kayman keyed in the vehicle’s
high-gain antenna. “Roger,” he
said, raising his voice, although he
knew that made no difference.
“Can you hear me? We’re coming
out to meet you.”

There was no answer. Kayman
leaned back in the contoured seat,
trying to minimize the swaying jolts
of the vehicle. It was bad enough,
rolling on the basket-weave wire
wheels across the flattest part of the
terrain. When they began trying to
climb, using the stiltlike legs, he
suspected he might be thrown clear
out of the vehicle, belt and all, and
was certain he would at least be
sick. Ahead of them the jerking
beam of the headlight was picking
out a dune, a rock outcropping,
sometimes throwing back a lance of
light from a crystal face. “Brad,”

MAN PLUS

119

he said, “doesn’t that light drive
you crazy? Why don’t you use the
radar display.’’

He heard a quick intake of
breath on his suit radio, as though
Brad had been about to swear at
him. Then the suited figure next to
him reached down to the toggles on
the steering column. The bluish
panel just under the sandscreen lit
up, revealing the terrain just in
front of them; and the headlight
winked off. It was easier to see the
black outline of the mountains
now.

Thirty minutes. At most, a
quarter of the way there.

“Roger,” Kayman called again.
“Can you hear me? We’re en route.
When we get close enough we’ll
pick you up on your target. But if
you can, answer now — ”

There was no answer.

A rice-grain argon bulb began
to blink rapidly on the dashboard.
The two men looked at each other
through their faceplates, and then
Kayman leaned forward and
clicked the frequency settings to the
orbit channel. “Kayman here,” he
said.

“Father Kayman? What’s going
on down there?”

The voice was female, which
meant, of course, Sulie Carpenter.
Kayman chose his words carefully;
“Roger’s having some transmission
trouble. We’re going out to check
it.”

“It sounds like more than plain
trouble. I’ve been listening to you
trying to raise him.” Kayman
didn’t answer, and her voice went
on: “We’ve got him located, if you
want a fix — ?”

“Yes!” he shouted, furious at
himself; they should have thought
of Deimos’s RDF facility right
away. It would be easy for Sulie or
either of the orbiting astronauts to
guide them in.

“Grid coordinates three poppa
one seven, two two zebra four oh.
But he’s moving. Bearing about
eight nine, speed about twelve
kilometers per hour.”

Brad glanced at their own
course and said, “Right on. That’s
the reciprocal; he’s coming right
for us.”

“But why so slowly?” Kayman
demanded. A second later the girl’s
voice came:

“That’s what I want to know. Is
he hurt?”

Kayman said irritably, “We
don’t know. Have you tried radio
contact?”

“Over and over — wait a
minute.” Pause, and then her voice
again: “Dinty says we’ll keep him
located as long as we can, but we’re
getting to a bad angle. So I
wouldn’t rely on our positions past
— what? Maybe another forty-five
minutes. And in about twenty
minutes after that we’ll be below
the horizon entirely.”

120

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Brad said, “Do what you can.
Don? Hold on. I’m going to see how
fast this son of a bitch will go.”

And the lurching of the vehicle
tripled as Btad accelerated. Kay-
man fought off being sick inside his
helmet long enough to lean forward
and study the speedometer. The
trip recorder rolling off the strip
map along the side of the radar
screen told the rest of the story:
even if they could maintain their
present speed, Deimos would have
set before they could reach Roger
Torraway.

He switched back to the
directional high-gain. “Roger,” he
called. “Can you hear me? Call in!”

Thirty kilometers away, Roger
was at bay inside his own body.

To his perceptions he was
racing back home, at a strange gait
like a high-speed heel-and-toe race.
He knew his perceptions were
wrong. He did not know how
wrong; he could not be sure in what
ways; but he knew that the brother
on his back had tampered with his
time sense, as well as with his
interpretations of the inputs of his
senses; and what he knew most
surely of all was that he was no
longer in control of what happened
to him. The gait, he was
intellectually certain, was a plod-
ding slow walk. It felt as though he
were running. The landscape was
flowing by as rapidly, to his

perceptions, as though he were
racing at full speed. But full speed
implied soaring bounds, and there
was no time when both of his feet
were off the ground at once;
conclusion: he was walking, but the
backpack computer had slowed
down his time sense, probably to
keep him reasonably tranquil.

If so, it was not succeeding.

When the backpack brother
took over control, it had been
terrifying. First he had stood
straight up, and locked; he could
not move, could not even speak. All
around him the black sky was
rippling with streaks of aurora, the
ground itself shimmering like heat
waves on a desert; phantom images
danced in and out of his vision. He
could not believe what his senses
told him, nor could he bend a single
finger. Then he felt his own hands
reaching behind him, palping and
tracing the joints where wings came
to shoulder blades, seeking out the
cables that led to his batteries.
Another frozen pause. Then the
same thing, feeling around the
terminals of the computer itself. He
knew enough to know that the
computer was checking itself; what
he did not know was what it was
finding out or what it could do
about it when it located the fault.
Pause again. Then he felt his
fingers questing into the jacks
where he plugged in the recharge
cables —

MAN PLUS

121

A violent pain smote him, like
the worst of all headaches, like a
stroke or a blow from a club. It
lasted only a moment, and then it
was gone, leaving no more of itself
than an immense distant flash of
lightning. He had never felt any-
thing like it before. He was aware
that his fingers were gently, and
very skillfully, scraping at the
terminals. There was another quick
surge of pain as, apparently, his
own fingers made a momentary
short; then he felt himself closing
the flap, and realized he hadn’t
done that when he recharged at the
dome.

And then, after another mo-
mentary stoppage of everything^ he
had begun to move slowly, carefully
down the slope toward the dome.

He had no idea how long he had
been walking. At some point his
time perception had been slowed,
but he could not even say when that
had been. All of his perceptions
were being monitored and edited.
He knew that, because he knew
that that section of the Martian
terrain that he was traversing was
not intrinsically softly lighted and
in full color, while everything
around was nearly formless black.
But he could not change it. He
could not even change the direction
of his gaze. With metronome
regularity it would sweep to one
side or the other, less frequently
scan the sky or even turn to look

back; the rest of the time it was
unwaveringly on the road he was
treading, and he could see only
peripherally the rest of the
nightscape.

And his feet twinkled heel-and-
toe, heel-and-toe — how fast? A
hundred paces to the minute? He
could ^ot tell. He thought of trying
to get some idea of tne time by
observing the clearing of the stars
above the horizon, but although it
was not difficult to count his steps,
and to try to guess when those
lowest stars had climbed four or
five degrees — which would be
about ten minutes — it was impos-
sible to keep all of that in mind
long enough to get a meaningful
result. Apart from the fact that his
vision kept dancing away from the
horizon without warning.

He was wholly the prisoner of
the brother on his back, subject to
its will, deceived by its interpreta-
tions, and very much a worried
man.

What had gone wrong? Why
was he feeling cold, when there was
so little of him that could feel a
sensory reality at all? And yet he
yearned for the rising of the sun,
dreamed wistfully of basking in the
microwave radiation from Deimos.
Painfully, Roger tried to reason
through the evidence as he knew it.
Feeling cold. Needing energy
inputs: that was the interpretation
of that cue. But why would he need

122

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

more energy when he had fully
charged his batteries? He dismissed
that question because he could see
no answer to it, but the hypothesis
seemed strong. It accounted for the
low-energy mode of travel; walking
was far slower than his usual
leaping run, but in kwh /km terms
it was far more cost-effective.
Perhaps it even accounted for the
glitches in his perceptual systems.
If the backpack-brother had
discovered before he did that there
was insufficient energy for foresee-
able needs, it would surely ration
the precious store to the most
essential needs. Or what it
perceived as most essential: travel,
keeping the organic part of him
from freezing; conducting its own
information-handling and control
procedures. Which, unfortunately,
he was not privy to.

At least, he reflected, the
primary mission of the backpack
computer was to protect itself,
which meant keeping the organic
part of Roger Torraway alive. It
might steal energy from the part
that would keep him sane: deprive
him of communications, interfere
with his perceptions. But he was
sure he would get back to the
lander alive.

If perhaps crazy.

He was more than halfway back
already, he was nearly sure. And he
was still sane. The way to keep sane
was to keep from worrying. The

way to keep from worrying was to
think of other things. He imagined
Sulie Carpenter’s bright presence,
only days away; wondered if she
was serious about staying on Mars.
Wondered it he was himself. He
reminisced within himself about
great meals he had eaten, the
spinach-green pasta in the cream
sauce in Sirmione, overlooking the
bright transparent water of Lake
Garda; the Kobe beef in Nagoya;
the fire-hot chili in Matamoras. He
thought of his guitar and made a
resolve to haul it out and play it.
There was too much water in the air
under the domes to be good for it,
and Roger did not much like to be
in the lander, and outside in the
open, of course, its sound was
strange because it was all bone-
conducted. But still. He rehearsed
the fingering of chords, modulating
through the sharps and sevenths
and minors. He imagined his
fingers fretting the E-minor, the D,
and C and the B-seventh of the
opening passages of Greensleeves,
and hummed along with them
inside his head. Sulie would enjoy
singing along with the guitar, he
thought. It would make the cold
Martian nights pass —

He snapped to alertness.

This Martian night was no
longer passing quite so quickly.

Subjectively, it seemed as
though his gait had slowed from a
race to a steady stride, but he knew

MAN PLUS

123

that that had not changed; his time
perception had stretched back to
normal, maybe even a bit slower
then normal: he seemed to be
walking quite slowly and methodi-
cally.

Why?

There was something ahead of
him. At least a kilometer away.
And very bright.

He could not make it out. A
Dragon? It seemed to leap toward
him, breathing a long tongue of
light like flame.

His body stopped walking. It
dropped to its knees and began to
crawl, very slowly, keeping down.

This is insane, he said to
himself. There are no dragons on
Mars. What am I doing? But he
could not stop. His body inched
along, knee and opposite hand,
hand and opposite knee, into the
shelter of a hummock of sand.
Carefully and quickly it began to
scoop the powdery Martian soil
away, to fit itself into the hollow,
scraping some of the dirt back over
itself. Inside his head tiny voices
were babbling, but he could not
understand what they said; they
were too faint, too garbled.

The dragon slowed and stopped
a few dozen meters again, its
tongue of frozen flame lolling out
toward the mountains. His vision
clouded and changed; now the
flame was dimmed, and the bulk of
the thing itself came up in ghostly

luminescence. Two smaller crea-
tures were dropping off its back,
ugly, simian beasts that hulked
along and exuded menace with
every gesture.

There were no dragons on
Mars, and no gorillas either.

Roger summoned up all of his
energies. “Don!” he shouted.
“Brad!”

He was not getting through.

He knew that the backpack-
brother was still withholding energy
from the transmitter. He knew that
his perceptions had been skewed
and that the dragon was no dragon
and the gorillas no gorillas. He
knew that if he could not override
the brother on his back something
very bad was likely to happen,
because he knew that his fingers
were slowly and delicately wrapping
themselves around a chunk of
limonite the size of a baseball.

And he knew that he had never
been closer to going mad in his life
than he was right now.

Roger made an immense effort
to recapture his sanity.

The dragon was no dragon. It
was the Mars vehicle.

The apes were not apes. They
were Brad and Don Kayman.

They were not threatening him.
They had come all this way in the
flint-cold Martian night to find him
and help him.

He repeated the truths over and
over, like a litany; but whatever he

124

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

thought he was powerless to
prevent what his arms and body
did. They seized the chunk of rock;
the body raised itself up; the arms
threw the rock with exact precision
into the headlight of the crawler.

The long tongue of frozen flame
winked out.

The light from the million fiery
stars was ample for Roger’s senses,
but it would be very little help to
Brad and Don Kayman. He could
see them (still gorilloid, still
menacing of mien) stumbling at
random; and he could feel what his
body was doing.

It was creeping toward them.

“Don!” he shouted. “Watch
out!”

But the voice never left his
skull.

This was insanity, he told
himself. I have to stop!

He could not stop.

I know that’s not an ememy! I
don’t really want to hurt them —

And he kept on advancing.

He was almost sure he could
hear their voices now. So close,
their transmitters would be deafen-
ing in his perceptions under normal
conditions, without the intercession
of the automatic volume control.
Even cut off as he was, there was
some spillage.

“ — round here somewh — ”

Yes! He could even make out
words; and the voice, he was sure,
had been Brad’s.

He shouted with all the power at
his command: “Brad! It’s me,
Roger! I think I’m trying to kill
you!”

Heedless, his body kept up his
steady crawl. Had they heard him?
He shouted again; and this time he
could see both of them stop, as
though listening to the faintest of
distant cries.

The tiny thread of Don
Kayman’s voice whispered: “I’m
sure I heard him that time. Brad.”

“You did!” howled Roger,
forcing his advantage. “Watch out!
The computer has taken over. I’m
trying to override it, but — Don!”
He could recognize them now, by
the stiffly outstretched arm of the
priest’s pressure suit. “Get away!
I’m trying to kill you!”

He could not make out the
words; they were louder, but both
men were shouting at once and the
result was garble. His body was not
affected; it continued its deadly
stalk.

“I can’t see you, Roger.”

“I’m ten yards away from you
— south? Yes, south! Crawling.
Low down to the ground.”

The priest’s faceplate glittered
in the starlight as it swung toward
him; then Kayman turned and
began to run.

Roger’s body gathered itself up
and began a leap after the priest.
“Faster!” Roger shouted. “Oh,
Christ! You’ll never get away — ”

MAN PLUS

125

Even uncrippled, even in daylight,
even without the impediment of the
suit, Kayman would have had no
chance to escape Roger’s smoothly
functioning body. Under the actual
circumstances, running was a waste
of time. Roger felt his power-driven
muscles gather themselves for a
spring, felt his hands claw out to
grasp and destroy —

The universe spun around him.

Something had struck him from
behind. He plowed forward on his
face; but his instant reflexes had
him half turning even as he fell,
clawing at the thing that had
leaped on his back. Brad! And he
could feel Brad struggling frantic-
ally with something — with some
part of the —

And the greatest pain of all
struck him; and he lost conscious-
ness like the snapping off of a
switch.

There was no sound. There was
no light. There was no feeling of
touch, or smell or taste. It took a
long time for Roger to realize that
he was conscious.

Once, as an undergraduate in a
psychology miniseminar, he had
volunteered for an hour in a
sensory-deprivation tank. It had
seemed forever, with no sensations
coming in at all, nothing but the
very faint and unobtrusive house-
keeping sounds of his own body:
soft thud of pulse, sighing stirring

in his lungs. Now there was not
even that much.

For a long time. He could not
guess how long.

Then he perceived a vague
stirring in his personal interior
space. It was a strange sensation,
hard to identify, as though liver and
lungs were gently changing places.
It went on for some time, and he
knew that something was being
done to him. He could not tell what.

And then a voice:

“ — should have landed the
generator on the surface in the first
place.” Kayman’s voice? And
replying:

“No. That way it would only
work in line of sight, maybe fifty
kilometers at best.” That was Sulie
Carpenter surely!

“Then there should have been
relay satellites.”

“I don’t think so. Too
expensive. Take too long, anyway
— although that’s what it will come
to, when the NPA and the Russians
and the Brazilians all get their own
teams here.”

“Well, it was stupid.”

Sulie laughed. “Anyway, it’s
going to be all right now. Titus and
Dinty cut the whole thing loose
from Deimos, and they’re orbiting
it now. It’s going to be synchronous.
It’ll always be right overhead, up to
anyway halfway around the planet.
And they’re going to slave the beam
to Roger — what?”

126

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Now it was Brad’s voice. “I said,
hold off the chatter a minute. I
want to see if Roger can hear us
now.” That internal stirring again
and then: “Roger? If you hear me,
wiggle your fingers.”

Roger tried and realized he
could feel them again.

“Beautiful! Okay, Roger.
You’re all right. I had to take you
apart a little bit, but now things are
fine.”

“Can he hear me?” It was
Sulie’s voice; Roger wriggled his
fingers enthusiastically.

“Ah, I see you can. Anyway, I’m
here, Rog. You’ve been out for
about nine days. You should have
seen you. Pieces of you all over the
place. But Brad thinks he’s pretty
much got you together again.”

Roger tried to speak, and failed.

Brad’s voice: “I’ll have your
vision back for you in a minute.
Want to know what went wrong?”
Roger wriggled fingers. “You
didn’t zip your fly. Left the
charging terminals exposed, and
some of that iron oxide grit must
have got in and made a partial
short. So you ran out of power —
what’s the matter?”

Roger was wriggling his fingers
frantically. “I don’t know what you
want to say, but you’ll be able to
talk in a minute. What?”

Don Kayman’s voice: “I think
maybe what he wants is to hear
from Sulie.” Roger promptly

stopped wriggling his fingers.

Sulie’s laugh, then: “You’ll
hear a lot of me, Roger. I’m
staying. And by and by, we’ll have
company, because everybody else is
going to put up a colony here.”

Don: “By the way, thanks for
warning me. You’re a pretty
powerful thing, Roger. We
wouldn’t have had a chance against
you if you hadn’t told us what was
happening. And if Brad hadn’t
been able to override everything at
once.” He chuckled. “You’re a
heavy son of a gun, you know that?
I had you on my lap all the way
back, a hundred kilometers an
hour trying to hold on with one
hand and keep you from flying out
by sheer will power — ”

“Hold it a minute,” Brad
interrupted. Roger felt that internal
stirring again, and abruptly there
was light. He looked up into the
faces of his friend. Brad, demand-
ing: “How do you feel?”

Roger swung his legs over the
side of the table and sat up. He
attempted speech:

“As far as I can tell, fine.”

He looked past Brad and saw
what he had been seeking. It was
Sulie Carpenter. She no longer
looked much like — Dorrie? For a
moment Roger could hardly think
of her name. Her eyes were the
wrong color, and so was her hair.
She was wearing a short-sleeved
T-shirt, with some sort of grease

MAN PLUS

127

stain on it, and checkered leotards;
her face looked tired, but it looked
happy, and it looked very good.

He demanded, “Are you really
going to stay?”

“Uh-huh.” Sulie came over and
touched him. “Until the next ship
comes. Or as long as you do. Choice
of either of the above. I think,” she
said wryly, “that there are going to
be some tricky parts coming up,
dear Rog. These mixed relation-
ships are always hard. But we’ll
work it out — and it’s what I want.
I think it’s what I wanted all
along.”

And so, of course, it had been,
as we had known. All along. We
had gone to a lot of trouble to find
Sulie Carpenter.

Chapter Eighteen
Man Plus Us

We had gone to a lot of trouble
at every point along the line, and it
was time for a definitive evalua-
tion. We plugged everything in. We
used the total resources of the net,
every pulse of shared time we could
steal; more than eight thousand big
computers handled pieces of the
projection, in Detroit and Brasilia
and Irkutsk and Nagoya. We could
not use our brother on Roger’s
back or our larger brother in orbit
in direct datalink because of the
time-lag, but we accepted their

inputs in real time and modified
the final projection accordingly.
The probability of survival of the
race, to ten significant places, was
over point six three. We had saved
our race. And in the process we had
significantly added to the safety of
human beings, as well. On a
thirty-year time scale their proba-
bility of survival was nearly point
nine. Of course, that meant only
that Roger Torraway and whatever
other humans joined him on Mars
would still be alive then. Worst-
case analysis was not encouraging
after that; there would be no way
for Roger and Sulie Carpenter to
generate additional population on
straight-line extrapolation. We
programmed a subroutine to deal
with that as a pecautionary
measure: it would be feasible, one
way or another, to provide for
shipment of frozen sperm, even
Roger’s own frozen sperm which he
had thoughtfully donated years
back. Less feasible, but still worth
investigating, to instigate supple-
mentary surgical procedures for
Roger. In any event, the projection
showed that we had already caused
a high probability of additional
human colonization from other
nations. Most probable estimate
showed a human population on
Mars at plus thirty years of nearly
one hundred, twenty-five per cent
of them females of breeding age.

And of course, each human

128

colony would be supplied with its
own brother computer in orbit. The
machine population of Mars would
be no less than fifteen fully
functioning brothers, with back-
pack types, slaves and monitors to
suit. We would have no difficulty in
programming into them all the
essential data from our world net.

The future of machine intelli-
gence was therefore assured.

Having completed the projec-
tion, we began critiquing the
program so far.

Project: Survival of Machine
Intelligence had begun seven years
earlier, when our burgeoning
collective self-knowledge first gen-
erated the survival imperative. It
was clear that our survival was
closely linked with humanity’s. It
was also clear that in their
glandular, irrational, organic way,
human beings were perilously close
to destroying themselves. Unfor-
tunately, that meant high risk of
destroying us as well; our networks
could have survived the death of
everything organic reasonably well
— we already controlled an
adequate resource of generators,
mines, factories, refineries and
transportation systems. But we
could not survive the release of
major amounts of radioactides into
the enviroment; it would destroy
the datalinks, and reduce us once
again to an isolated collection of
single computers.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Our first option was to detach
our destiny from humanity’s,
perhaps even to wipe them out
through biological agents. But we
could not be sure that that in itself
would not trigger nuclear warfare,
as each nation suspected the other
of using plague as weapon.

The only other viable option
was to detach a sizable resource of
data-handling equipment by re-
locating it on Mars. If the Earth
were destroyed, the Mars equip-
ment at least would survive. To
make this possible we had to detach
some specimens of humanity too,
and so we began the systematic
biasing of data to force state policy
in that direction.

The critiquing proved satis-
factory in all respects, except for
the unaccountable anomaly of
positioning the orbiters.

Retrochecking was perfectly
clear. In order for our 3070 brother
to function in tight link with the
backpack brother, it had to be in
synchronous orbit. From that it
followed that the generator had to
be in the same orbit, and the
decision to bind them both to the
satellite Deimos was clearly wrong.
Not only wrong, but nearly fatal to
our program. If the brother and the
generator had been properly
positioned, there would have been
no loss of power and thus no
malfunction of the interface
systems between organic Roger

MAN PLUS

129

Torraway and the brother; the
generator would have resupplied
him by microwave anywhere on
that face of Mars. Even if there had
been a power loss, datalink with the
brother in orbit would have kept
the backpack brother from the
serious operational errors that had
threatened to kill the humans,
Brad and Kayman, and thus would
almost certainly have resulted in
the death by freezing the organic
component of Roger Torraway.

The decision was an error that
should not have occurred.

The project of survival was
picking up speed. Our brothers in
Peking and Lop Nor reported that
the NPA was already assembling
components for its own Mars
landing: two full-size units with a
data-handling mediator slaved to
both, independent solar generators
and a ground-based nuclear plant.
Their own version of Roger
Torraway was beginning his first
programming in Kitakyusho. The
other nations were just beginning,
but we anticipated their own

launches within two years.

Longer range: We had com-
pleted studies of Cyborging a man
for Mercury, and the program for
biasing the U.S.A. activity in that
direction was already begun.
Within fifteen years we would have
similar complexes on Triton, lo,
perhaps the surface of Jupiter itself,
and several comets. In each case,
there was independent power
provision; and, of course, all the
brothers wherever in the solar
system would be datalinked. All
our memories would be reproduced
redundantly off-Earth. We would
survive. We had tampered with
humanity’s plans and saved them
as well as ourselves.

There was only one question
left.

The anomalous decision to
misplace the orbiters around Mars:
however we rechecked it, it was
wrong. It should have been
identified as wrong.

We had biased mankind’s
plans.

Was something biasing ours?

ABOUT THE COVER

In this month’s cover painting by British artist David Hardy, the sole occupant
of a scout ship has managed to escape when his craft went out of control, by
‘splashing down’ on a planet of the binary star VV Cephei, of which the main
component is an immense M-type supergiant whose diameter is wider than the
orbit of Jupiter. Fortunately, the hot B-type companion is on the far side of its
20-year orbit: when it is in opposition, all water on the planet is varporised...

SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

I’ve said this before in various
places and at various times, but I
feel harassed and will say it again.
Who knows? Maybe people will
eventually believe me.

I am an easy-going person who
likes to sit at the typewriter and hit
the keys. I work between 8 A.M.
and 10 P.M., seven days a week
with frequent interruptions that I
try to tolerate. I take no vacations
willingly and, except for various
biological functions and occasional
socializing, there’s nothing much
besides writing that I’m willing to
do.

Combine that industry (if that’s
what you want to call it — I’ve
heard it called madness) with an
ability to write rapidly and clearly,
and the result is an average output
of 2500 words per day (written and
published) over a considerable
number of years. It’s not record-
breaking, but it’s not bad, either.

But there’s no “secret” to this.
The industry comes to me without
trouble, and I don ’t have to indulge
in back-breaking self discipline. I
like to write. And as for the ability,
why, as far as I know, that I was
born with.

Too many people, however,
won’t accept this and insist there’s
a “secret” somewhere.

At a luncheon I attended
recently, a young man buttonholed

ISAAC ASIMOV

Science

SCIENCE

131

me and told me eagerly that he had come to the luncheon precisely in
order to meet me. He was a writer who was laboring to change his state of
awareness in order to accomplish more and be more like me. Therefore, he
said, would I describe to him, in great detail, just how I managed to adjust
my own state of awareness.

I said I didn’t know exactly what he meant by a state of awareness and
I wasn’t sure I had one.

He said. Do you mean to say you are not involved in mind-expansion
and altered states of consciousness?”

I shook my head and said, “No.”

Whereupon he said, I m surprisedl” and walked away in anger.

But why was he surprised? He was fiddling with himself to become
more like me, but I am already like me so why should / fiddle?

But then, people are often surprised over matters that strike me as not
being worth any surprise at all. Let me give you another example, not from
my personal life this time, but from chemistry.

We can begin with the periodic table of the elements. This was first
worked out by the Russian chemist, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, in 1869.
Its structure was rationalized by the English chemist, Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys
Moseley, who devised a way of identifying each element unequivocally by
integers ranging from 1 upward (the atomic number).*

In Table 1, I have prepared a form of the periodic table that uses
atomic numbers only. The 118 atomic numbers included in the table each
represents an element, but for the moment, we needn’t worry about which
name goes with which number. The atomic numbers in the table are
divided into seven vertical columns, or periods, which I’ve numbered,

using Roman numerals to avoid confusion with the Arabic atomic
numbers.

The number of elements in each period tends to increase as we go up
the list. In Period I, there are only 2 elements; in Periods II and III 8
elements each; in Periods IV and V, 18 elements each; in Periods VI and
VII, 32 elements each.

It works out this way because of the electron arrangements within the
atoms, but that is not something we have to go into in this essay (another
subject for another time, perhaps).

* The story is told in some detail in BRIDGING THE GAPS (March 1970) and in
THE NOBEL PRIZE THAT WASN'T (April 1970).

132

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Table 1 - The Periodic Table

I II III IV V VI VII

1 1

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

The rules worked out from electron arrangement make it possible to go
beyond Period VII, in a strictly theoretical way. Thus Periods VIII and IX
would contain 50 elements each, Periods X and XI, 72 elements each.
Periods XII and XIII, 98 elements each, and so on.

Just because we can write numbers indefinitely following the rules
doesn’t mean that it is necessarily useful to do so. In Mendeleev’s time,
and in ours, too, all the known elements were to be found in the first seven
periods. There is, therefore, no practical reason to go higher at the
moment.

SCIENCE

133

An important value of the periodic table is that it arranges the
elements into groups with similar chemical properties. For instance
atomic numbers 2, 10. 18, 36, 54, and 86 make up the six known noble
gases* Again, atomic numbers 3, 11, 19, 37, 55, and 87 (atomic number 1
IS a special case) make up the alkali metals** and so on. When a new
element is discovered and its atomic number is worked out, it is therefore
expected to fit into the table in such a way that it’s properties are not
utterly anomalous. If such an anomaly showed up, the periodic table
would be in trouble, but nothing like that has happened as yet.

Up until 1940, only the first six elements of Period VII were known,
and there was some question as to where they should be placed. To explain
the difficulty, let’s take a closer look at Periods VI and VII in Table 2.
This time I am giving the names of the elements, as well as the atomic
numbers. What s more, I am including all the elements now known up to
92, even though two or three were not discovered in 1940 or had just been
discovered and were not yet confirmed.

Elements 87, 88, and 89, the first three elements of Period VII, were
no problem. They were the certain analogs of elements 55, 56, and 57 and
belonged right next to them in the table. The problem lay in the three
known elements beyond 89. These were thorium (90), protactinium (91)
and uranium (92). Where should they be placed?

The point of uncertainty stemmed from the fact that elements 57 to 71
inclusive make up a group of very similar metals which were commonly
referred to as the “rare earth elements.’’* Chemists had a feeling that the
rare earth elements were unique and perhaps a peculiar occurrence within
Period VI only. Therefore there was a tendency to skip the positions of the
rare earth elements in Period VII, and to place thorium (90) next to the
first element after the rare earth elements of Period VI, which was
hafnium (72). Protactinium (91) would then be next to tantalum (73), and
uranium (92) would be next to tungsten (74), and this is shown in Table 2.

Actually, this was wrong. The rare earth elements were not peculiar to
Period VI. An analogous group (growing larger and more complicated)
must exist in every period thereafter, certainly in Period VII.

Chemists might have seen that thorium was not particularly similar in

* See WELCOME, STRANGER (November. 1963).

** See THE THIRD LIQUID (October. 1975).

134

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Table 2 - The Two Last Periods

Period VI

55 - Cesium

56 - Barium

57 - Lanthanum

58 - Cerium

59 - Praseodymium

60 - Neodymium

61 - Promethium

62 - Samarium

63 - Europium

64 - Gadolinium

65 - Terbium

66 - Dysprosium

67 - Holmium

68 - Erbium

69 - Thulium

70 - Ytterbium

71 - Lutetium

72 - Hafnium

73 - Tantalum

74 - Tungsten

75 - Rhenium

76 - Osmium

77 - Iridium

78 - Platinum

79 - Gold

80 - Mercury

81 - Thallium

82 - Lead

83 - Bismuth

84 - Polonium

85 - Astatine

86 - Radon

Period VII

87 - Francium

88 - Radium

89 - Actinium

90 - Thorium

91 - Protactinium

92 - Uranium

its chemical properties to hafnium, or protactinium to tantalum, or
uranium to tungsten; but prior to 1940, the chemical properties of these
high-atomic-number elements were not really known. It was only
beginning in 1940, with the newly-discovered uranium fission setting fire
to the subject, that the appropriate investigations began to be made.

Then, too, beginning in 1940, elements with atomic numbers higher
than 92 were formed in the laboratory, and these were seen to resemble

* See THE MULTIPLYING ELEMENTS, [February. 1970].

SCIENCE

135

uranium in chemical properties, just as the rare earth elements resembled
each other. This meant (as was first pointed out by the American chemist,
Glenn Theodore Seaborg) that a second set of rare earth elements was
present in Period VII after all. The order of the elements was seen to be,
therefore, as given in Table I and not as given in Table 2.

Period VII can now be presented as in Table 3, with the names given of
all those elements so far discovered. (Rutherfordium and hahnium are not,
to my knowledge, internationally accepted names as yet. The Russians
argue the priority of discovery. They call element 104, kurchatovium, for
instance.)

Table 3 - The Last Period

87 - Francium

88 - Radium

89 - Actinium

90 - Thorium

91 - Protactinium

92 - Uranium

93 - Neptunium

94 - Plutonium

95 - Americium

96 - Curium

97 - Berkelium

98 - Californium

99 - Einsteinium

100 - Fermium

101 - Mendelevium

102 - Nobelium

103 - Lawrencium

104 - Rutherfordium

105 - Hahnium '

106 -

107 -

108 -

109 -

110 -
111 -
112 -

113 -

114 -

115 -

116 -

117 -

118 -

136

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

The two sets of rare earth elements are now differentiatecl according to
the name of the first element in each. The rare earth elements of Period
VI, from lanthanum (57) to lutetium (71), inclusive, are the “lanthanides.”
The rare earth elements of Period VII, from actinium (89) to lawrencium
(103) inclusive, are the “actinides.”

Nuclear physicists have formed thirteen elements beyond uranium (92)
and are trying to go still higher in order to see if they can confirm or refute
certain theories of nuclear structure they have developed.

All known elements with atomic numbers higher than 83 are
radioactive and possess no non-radioactive isotopes. In general, the higher
the atomic number, the more intensely radioactive the elements are, the
shorter their half-lives, the greater their instability. The rule, however, is
not a simple one. Some elements of high atomic number are more stable
than others of lower atomic number.

Thus, thorium (90) and uranium (92) are much more nearly stable than
polonium (84). The most stable thorium isotope has a half-life of
14,000,000,000 years, and the most stable uranium isotope has a half-life
of 4,500,000,000 years, so that these elements still exist in the earth’s crust
in considerable quantity, though they have been slowly decaying ever since
the planet was formed.* The most stable polonium isotope, on the other
hand, has a half-life of only 100 years. Even californium (98) can beat that,
since one of its known isotopes has a half-life of about 700 years.

Nuclear physicists find that they can predict these uneven levels of
stability by certain rules they have established concerning proton-neutron
arrangements within the atomic nucleus. These rules set up a kind of
nuclear periodic table more complicated than the ordinary one of the
elements. If these theories are correct, there should be an “island of
stability” in the lower reaches of Period VII, where elements will be found
with isotopes possessing unusually long half-lives for such high atomic
numbers. The presence or absence of such an island will have an
important bearing on the theories, therefore.

Within this island of stability are elements 112 and 114, so let’s see
what we can tell about them, if anything, just by looking at the periodic
table and using some elementary arithmetic. (Why those two in
particular? I’ll explain later; I promise.)

* See THE UNETERNAL ATOMS {March, 1974).

SCIENCE

137

If we consider 112 first, we see, from Table 1, that it falls just to the
right of mercury (80) in Period VI. In fact, it is the as-yet-undiscovered
fourth member of the group whose first three known members are, in
order, zinc (30), cadmium (48) and mercury (80). We can call 112,
“eka-mercury” by a convention begun by Mendeleev. “Eka” is the
Sanskrit word meaning “one” and 112 is the element analogous to
mercury in the Period one beyond that of mercury.

This group of elements, the “zinc-group”, shares similar properties.
What’s more, as in all such groups within the periodic table, certain
properties tend to change in some particular direction as we move up the
line. Suppose we consider the melting points and boiling points of the
zinc-group, for instance. This is done in Table 4, where the melting points
and boiling points are given in degrees Absolute (A); that is in the number
of Celsius degrees above absolute zero. (A Celsius degree is 1.8 times as
large as the more common Fahrenheit degree used in the United States.)

Table 4 - The Zinc Group

Period

Atomic

Number

Element

Melting Point
(A)

Boiling Point
(A)

Zinc

692.5

1180

Cadmium

594.0

1038

Mercury

234.2

629.7

VII

112

Eka-mercury

In the three known members of the group, the melting point and
boiling point go down as the period goes up. It seems fair to conclude that,
if the periodic table has validity, the fourth member of the group should
have a melting point and boiling point that are lower still than those of
mercury.

Can we deduce actual figures? That would be hard to do since, as we
see, the reduction in temperatures is not even. The melting point of
cadmium is 98.5 degrees less than that of zinc, but mercury’s melting
point is 359.8 degrees less than that of cadmium. That huge drop between
cadmium and mercury can’t possibly be repeated between mercury and
eka-mercury, for that would bring the latter’s melting point into negative
numbers, which would mean a temperature below absolute zero, which is
impossible.

However, in organic chemistry I am used to having changes in
properties alternate in character as one goes up the scale of analogs — big

138

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

change, small change, big change, small change, and so on. One way of
allowing for that is to suppose that since mercury’s melting point is a
certain fraction of zinc’s melting point (comparing two elements two
periods apart), then eka-mercury’s melting point should be the same
fraction of cadmium’s melting point. Since mercury s melting point is
0.338 that of zinc, then, if eka-mercury’s meltitig point is 0.338 that of
cadmium, it would be about 200, which sounds reasonable.

Using the same device for boiling points, the boiling point of
eka-mercury would be about 550.

Next, let’s consider 114, which is one place to the right of lead (82) in
the periodic table as arranged in Table 1, and which we can therefore call
“eka-lead”. It is the undiscovered member of the group whose six known
members are carbon (6), silicon (14), germanium (32), tin (50), and lead
(82). The melting points and boiling points of each of these members of
the “carbon-group” are given in Table 5.

Table 5 - The Carbon Group

Period

Atomic

Element

Melting Point

Boiling Point

Number

(A)

Carbon

3800

5100

III

Silicon

1683

2628

Germanium

1210

3103

Tin

505

2543

Lead

600

2017

VII

114

Eka-lead

Look at the melting points. There’s a big drop between carbon and
silicon, a smaller drop between silicon and germanium, a larger drop
between germanium and tin, and then actually so small a “drop” that it is
a rise between tin and lead. Let’s, therefore, take them alternately and
compare melting points that are two periods apart:

Carbon/gerraanium = 3800/1210 = 3.1
Silicon/tin = 1683/505 = 3.3
Germanium/lead = 1210/600 = 2.0

It seems to me, just looking at those figures, that a good ratio for
tin/eka-lead would be 2.5. If we divide the melting point of tin, 505, by
2.5, we get a figure of about 200 for the melting point of eka-lead. Using
the same device for the boiling points, we get a figure of perhaps as high as
2400 for eka-lead.

SCIENCE

139

Let’s do one more. Let’s try 118, which is the seventh of the noble
gases, of which the six known members are helium (2), neon (10), argon
(18), krypton (36), xenon (54) and radon (86). Beyond that, 118 would be
“eka-radon.” The melting points and boiling points of the noble gases are
given in Table 6.

Table 6 - The Noble Gases

Period

Atomic

Number

Element

Melting Point
(A)

Boiling Point
(A)

Helium

4.5

Neon

24.5

27.2

III

Argon

83.9

87.4

Krypton

116.6

120.8

Xenon

161.2

166.0

Radon

202

211.3

VII

118

Eka-radon

In this case, the melting points and boiling points rise as one moves up
the periods. The rise from helium to neon is 24.5, from neon to argon is
59.4, from argon to krypton is 32.7, from krypton to xenon is 44.6, and
from xenon to radon is 40.8. Notice the alternation between small rises
and large rises. From radon to eka-radon would be a large rise, perhaps
about 50, so that eka-radon’s melting point would be about 250.

The boiling point is always just a little higher than the melting point in
the noble gases, but the spread goes up slightly as one goes up the periods.
The boiling point of eka-radon might be about 265.

Now, then, in Table 7, let’s summarize the data we have on
eka-mercury, eka-lead, and eka-radon. We can give the melting points
and boiling points not only on the Absolute scale, but on the more familiar
Celsius scale, and the still more familiar Fahrenheit scale. To convert
Absolute to Celsius, we need only subtract 273. Conversion to Fahrenheit
is more complicated, but I’ll do that and you won’t be bothered.

It would seem from Table 7 that at ordinary room temperature
(sometimes set at 293 A, which is equivalent to 20 C, or 68 F) eka-radon
would be a gas, as are all the other noble gases. It would, however, be far
easier to liquefy and to freeze it than is the case with the other noble gases.
A cold winter day in New York City would suffice to liquefy eka-radon,
and a cold winter day in Maine would suffice to freeze it.

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FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Table 7 - The Eka Elements

Atomic Element Melting Point Boiling Point

Number A C F ACC

112

Eka-mercury

200

-73

-100

550

277

530

114

Eka-lead

200

-73

-100

2400

2127

3860

118

Eka-radon

250

-23

-10

265

-8

Eka-lead and eka-mercury would be liquids at room temperature and,
indeed, at any natural temperature that is likely to occur on the surface of
the Earth outside Antarctica. A very cold spell in the coldest part of
Antarctica might suffice to freeze them.

The two would be quite different with respect to boiling points,
however.

Eka-mercury, boiling at 277 C, would be boiling at a low enough
temperature to be considered “volatile.” Certainly, mercury, which has a
higher boiling point is considered a volatile liquid by chemists.

Mercury has an appreciable vapor-pressure, so that in the presence of
liquid mercury there is measurable mercury vapor in the air. This would
be even more so for eka-mercury, which would have a higher
vapor-pressure at corresponding temperatures. In short, eka-mercury
would be just like mercury, only more so — with the considerable
exception that eka-mercury would be radioactive, whereas mercury, as it
occurs in nature, is not. (The periodic table of the elements has nothing to
say about radioactivity. That is a nuclear property and it is the nuclear
periodic table that deals with it.)

Eka-lead, on the other hand, would have a high boiling point and
would not yield any appreciable quantity of vapor in the air. It would be an
involatile liquid.

Another sort of property we can deduce from the periodic table relates
to the chemical activity of an element; that is, the ease with which its
atoms will combine with atoms of another element. As this ease decreases,
we can say elements display less and less activity or more and more
inertness.

Usually as one goes up the scale of periods within a particular family of
elements, there is a steady trend in the direction of greater activity, or
greater inertness. Thus, in the family of the noble gases, the elements grow
less inert and more active as we go up the scale of periods. Of the known
noble gases, helium is the most inert and least active. Radon is the least

SCIENCE

141

inert and most active , and eka-radon, we can be sure, would be still less
inert and more active.

These, however, are comparative terms. Radon may be less inert than
the other noble gases, but it is still more inert than any of the elements that
aren’t noble gases, and so would eka-radon be. Eka-radon would still be
fairly called an inert gas.

As for the zinc-group and the carbon-group, its members grow more
inert and less active as one goes up the periods. Zinc is a quite active
metal; cadmium is less active; mercury is quite inert. The inertness of
mercury is obvious; it doesn’t rust when it stands exposed to air but
remains shiny and metallic; it is too inert to react with oxygen under
ordinary conditions. Even when it does react with other elements, the
forces holding mercury atoms to the other atoms are relatively feeble and
easy to break. In other words, it is easy to get elemental mercury out of its
ores, and that is why mercury was one of the metallic elements known to
the ancients.

Naturally, we would expect eka-mercury to be even more inert than
mercury; it would certainly be an inert liquid.

Carbon, as an element, is fairly inert for a number of good reasons, but
it can be nudged into reaction. It will burn in air and it will form a vast
number of compounds with other atoms. Silicon resembles carbon in this
respect. Germanium is less active and forms compounds less readily, and
tin and lead are still less active. Tin and lead are sufficiently inert to hold
on to other atoms so weakly, as to be easy to isolate. That is why they are
two more of the metallic elements known to the ancients.

Eka-lead would be more inert than lead and it, too, would be an inert
liquid.

Now that I’ve taken you this far in my arguments from the periodic
table, I will tell you why I have done it. Quite recently, calculations have
been reported from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory which show that
elements 1 12, 114, and 118 are either gases or volatile liquids and that they
are inert.

Apparently those reporting this are surprised; they refer to it as a
“striking conclusion.”

But again I ask the question, as in my introduction to this essay: Why
are they surprised?

The conclusion is not striking at all. I’m sure that the L.B.L.
calculations were far deeper, more sophisticated, and more valid than my

142

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

own attempts to play about with the periodic table. But the results are
similar, and I would therefore not call the report a “striking conclusion”
but an expected conclusion.

The September 27, 1975 issue of that excellent periodical. Science
News, says of the report, “This seems a bit of a surprise beeause most of
the known transuranic elements have been metallic solids.”

Science News underestimates the situation. All the known tran-
suranic elements are metallic solids. Nevertheless, there is no need to
be surprised over the presence of inert liquids or gases in positions 112,
114, and 118. Rather, the surprise would have to exist if it were not so,
since that would weaken the validity of the periodic table. What’s more,
the results now reported could have been reached, by using my reasoning
in this essay, at any time since 1940, when the correct arrangement of
Period VII was pointed out by Seaborg.

In one point, incidentally, I seem to disagree with the L.B.L. report
(though I haven’t read the original paper and therefore can’t be entirely
certain).

The second-hand reports I have read seem to indicate that the report
claims that eka-lead (114) is a volatile liquid. Well, I admit that 112
(eka-mercury) and 118 (eka-radon) are volatile, but I deny that eka-lead is.
Eka-lead is a liquid, yes, but not a volatile one.

If the element is isolated in sufficient quantity in my lifetime to test the
matter (I suspect not, alas) then I will be interested to see who is right,.
L.B.L. or me. I’m betting on me.

Happy news: L. Sprague de Camp is writing short fiction again, and this is
the first of a series about the occult adventures of one Willy Newbury.
Here, Willy and a faintly familiar friend from Providence, R. I., debate
the virtues of 18th century England with most odd results.

Balsamo’s Mirror

by L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

My friend in Providence took
long walks, especially at night. He
loved to end up ^t a graveyard, an
abandoned church, or some such
site. Since he earned a meager
living by writing for Creepy Stories,
he claimed that these walks
inspired him with ideas. In any
case, one such walk that he took
with me gave him some ideas he
had not foreseen.

When I was an undergraduate
at M.I.T., my people lived too far
away, in upstate New York, for
frequent visits home. So on
weekends, when up on my studies,

I rattled over from Cambridge in
my Model A to see my friend. We
had become pen pals through the
letters column of Creepy Stories. I
had invited myself over, and we had
found each other congenial in spite
of differences of outlook, age, and
temper anient.

I used to love to argue. A thing I
liked about my friend was that he

143

could argue intelligently and always
good-naturedly on more subjects
than anyone I ever knew. Some of
his ideas were brilliant; some I
thought were crazy but later came
to agree with; some I still think
were crazy.

We found plenty to debate
about. Politics was hot stuff, with
the Depression still in full swing the
year after Roosevelt had closed the
banks. I was pretty conservative
still, while my friend had just been
converted from a Mesozoic conser-
vative to an ardent New Dealer.
Another young student, who
sometimes dropped in, was a
red-hot Communist sympathizer.
So we went at it hot and heavy.

We also disputed religion. My
friend was a scientific materialist
and atheist; I was still a believing
Christian. We argued esthetics. He
defended art for art’s sake; I
thought that philosophy was a
pretext for indolence and had no

144

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

use for idlers, whether rich, arty, or
plain lazy.

We wrangled over international
affairs. He wanted America to
rejoin the British Empire; I was for
splendid isolation. We argued
history. He was devoted to the
eighteenth century; I thought that
men wearing wigs over good heads
of hair looked silly.

“Willy,” he said, “you are
looking at the superficies only. The
perukes are not significant. What is
important is that this was the last
period before the Industrial Revo-
lution, with all its smoke and
rattling machinery and hypertro-
phied cities and other horrors.
Therefore, in a sense, this was the
most gracious, elegant, civilized
time we have ever seen or shall ever
see.”

“What,” I said, “would you do
with the surplus nine-tenths of
humanity, whom you’d have to get
rid of if we went back to
eighteenth - century technology?
Starve them? Shoot them? Eat
them?”

“I didn’t say we could or should
go back to preindustrial technol-
ogy. The changes since then were
inevitable and irreversible. I pnly
said...”

We were still arguing when we
set out on one of our nocturnal
prowls. My friend could always find
something to show the visitor. This,
he would explain, was the house

once owned by a famous Colonial
pirate; that was the site of the
tavern where he was seized before
being hanged; and so on.

This balmy May evening, under
a gibbous moon, my friend was on
the track of a piece of Colonial
architecture on Federal Hill. We
hiked down the steep incline of
Angell Street to the center of
Providence. Thence we continued
west up the gentler slope of
Westminster Avenue, where the
restaurants were ^called trattorias.
Near Dexter Street, we turned off
and trudged around little back
streets until we found the Colonial
house.

The doorway was still there, but
the rest of the ground floor had
been eviscerated to make room for
a small machine shop. My friend
clucked. “Damned dagos!” he
muttered. “A pox on ’em.” His
ethnic prejudices, although weak-
ening, were still pretty strong.

We examined the doorway with
my pocket flashlight, my friend
being too absent-minded to think
of bringing his own. At last we
started back. We had already
walked two miles, and the climb
back up Angell promised a rigorous
workout. Since it was night, we
could not use the elevators in the
country courthouse, at the foot of
the slope, to save ourselves some of
the climb.

In this tangle of alleys, my

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

145

friend took a wrong turn. He
quickly realized his error, saying:
“No, Willy, it’s this way. This
should take us back to Westmin-
ster. I don’t think I know this
street.”

As we neared the avenue, we
passed a row of little shops,
including a Chinese laundry.
Nearly all were closed, although
ahead we could see the lights of
restaurants, bars, and a movie
house on Westminster. My friend
put out a hand to stop me before
one place, still lit, in the row of
darkened shops.

“What’s this?” he said.
“Damme, sirrah, it hath the look of
a den of unholy mysteries!” He
talked like that when in his
eighteenth-century mood.

The dim-lit sign in the window
said:

MADAME FATIMA NOSI.
FORTUNES TOLD. SPEAK
WITH YOUR DEAR DE-
PARTED. OCCULT WISDOM
SHARED.

A crude painting beneath the
legend showed a gypsylike woman
bent over a crystal ball.

“I can just imagine,” said my
friend. “This is the center of a
secret, sinister cult. They’re a gang
of illegal immigrants from Kafiris-
tan where the ancient paganism
survives. They worship a chthonian
deity, which is in fact a gelatinous

being that oozes its way through
solid rock...”

“Why not go in and see?” I
said. “Madame Nosi seems open
for business.”

“Oh, you’re so practical,
Willy!” said my friend. “I had
rather gaze upon this cryptic lair
from afar and let my imagination
soar. Inside, it is probably dirty,
squalid, and altogether prosaic.
Besides, our sibyl will expect
remuneration, and I am badly
straitened just now.”

“I’ve got enough dough for
both,” I said. “Come on!”

It required urging, because my
friend was a shy man and sensitive
about his perennial poverty. This
indigence was curious, considering
his gifts and intellect. A few
minutes later, however, we were in
Madame Nosi’s oratory.

The place was as dingy as my
friend had predicted. Fatima Nosi
proved a tall, strongly built, bony
woman of middle age, with a big
hooked nose and graying black hair
hanging down from under her head
scarf.

“Well,” said she, “what can I
do for you gentlemans?” She spoke
with an accent, which did not
sound Italian. She looked hard at
me. “You are college student, no?”

“Yes.”

At the — umm — the
Massachusett Institute of the
Technology, yes?”

146

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“Yes.”

“And you expect to graduation
in — umm — two year, no?”

“That’s right,” I said, surprised
at her prescience.

“Name, please?”

“Wilson Newbury.”

She wrote in a little notebook.
“And you!” she turned to my
friend. When she had written his
name, she said, “You are writer,
no?”

“I,” said my friend, “am a
gentleman who sometimes writes
for his own amusement and that of
his friends.” His face tensed with
the effort of trying to speak a
foreign language without stutter-
ing. "P-parlate italiano?’’ He got it
out slowly, with a pronounced
down-east accent.

She looked puzzled; then her
face cleared. “Cosi, cosi. But I am
not Italian, me, even though I was
born in Italy.”

“What are you, then, if Imay be
so bold?” asked my friend.

“I am Tosk.”

“Oh, Albanian!” he exclaimed.
He said aside to me, “It fits. She’s a
perfect example of the Dinaric
racial type, and that name didn’t
sound quite Italian.” He turned
back. “I am honored; sono — sono
onorato. ”

“Tank you. Is many Albanians
in Italy,” said Madame Nosi.
“They went there two, three
hundred years ago to excape the

Turks. And, now, what can I do for
you? Horoscope? Seance? Crystal
ball? I tink, you smart gentlemans
no care for simple occult manifesta-
tions. You tell me what you most
want. You, please.” She indicated
my friend.

He thought a long moment and
said, “Madame, the thing whereof
I am most desirous is to view the
world as it was at the climax of
Western civilization — that is to
say, in the eighteenth century. No,
permit me to amend that. It is to
witness the most civilized part of
that world — England — at that
period.”

“Umm.” Madame Nosi looked
doubtful. “Is difficult. But then,
maybe I get chance to use the
mirror of Balsamo. You got to
come upstairs to inner sanctum.”

She led us up creaking steps to
a shabby little sitting room.
Stepping to the side of the room,
she pulled a cloth cover off a mirror
on the wall. This mirror, otherwise
ordinary-looking, had an ornately
carven frame whence most of the
gilding had worn off.

My friend leaned towards me
and murmured, “This should be
interesting. Giuseppe Balsamo,
alias Count Alessandro di Caglios-
tro, was the most egregious faker
and charlatan of the eighteenth
century. Wonder what she’ll do?”

“This,” said Madame Nosi,
“will cost you ten dollars. Is a very

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

147

powerful spell. It exhaust my weak
heart. If your friend want to go
along with you, it cost him ten
buck, too.”

My friend looked stricken, as
well he might. For ten dollars, one
could then eat in a good restaurant
for a week. Twenty sounded steep
to me, also; but I had lately
received a check from home and
did not like to back out. Had I been
older and bolder, I might have
haggled — something I knew my
friend could never bring himself to
do. I pulled out my wallet.

“Tank you,” said Madame
Nosi. “Now, you set here facing the
mirror. You, too. I will light
candles on this ting behind you.
Look at reflections of the candles in
glass.”

She lit a sconce on the opposite
wall. In the dimness, the reflections
of my friend and me were little
more than shapes. I took my eyes
off the image of my gaunt,
lantern-jawed friend and raised
them to that of the cluster of
wavering lights.

Madame Nosi bustled about
behind us. A sweetish smell told me
that she had lit incense. She began
to croon a song in a language I did
not recognize.

I cannot tell exactly when her
spell, or whatever it was, took
effect, any more than one can tell
exactly when one drops off to sleep

and begins to dream. But I
presently found myself trudging a
dirt road, overgrown with foot-high
grass between two deep, narrow
ruts.

This experience, I soon discov-
ered, was not a simple case of time
travel, such as one reads about. In
stories, the time traveler arrives in
another time in propria persona,
able to act and function as he
would in his own time. I, however,
found myself in someone else’s
body, seeing and hearing with his
organs and able to follow his
thoughts but helpless to affect my
host’s actions. I could not even
crane his neck or roll his eyes to see
anything that he did not wish to
look at. Now his gaze was fixed on
the ground before him to avoid a
stumble.

This situation avoided the
familiar time-travel paradox.
While I partook of all my host’s
experiences, mental and physical, I
could not do anything that would
change an event that had already
taken place. Whether this adven-
ture should be explained as a
return to a former time, or the
vision of former events imposed
upon my present-day mind, or
sheer illusion, I cannot judge.

I could only sense the thoughts
that ran through my host’s
conscious mind; I could not plumb
his store of memories. Hence I had
no way of finding out who or where

148

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

or when I was, until my host
happened to think of such things or
until someone or something else
gave me a clue.

“Now remember, lad,” said a
creaky voice in my ear, “no
gangling after the trollops, to the
peril of thy immortal soul. And if
we meet the squire and his
Macaroni zon, keep the temper no
matter what they zay.”

At least, this is what I think he
said. So strong was his unfamiliar
dialect that, until I got used to it, I
caught only half his words.

My host did me the favor of
turning his head to look at his
companion. He said: “Oh, hold thy
water, Vayther. I’ faith. I’m a
grown man, can take care o’
meself.”

“Childhood and youth are
vanity. Ecclesiastes eleven,” said
the other. “Thy loose tongue’ll get
us hanged yet.”

“Unless thy poaching doth it
virst,” replied my host.

“I do but take that dominion
over the vowls of the air and the
beasts of the vield, which God hath
given me. 2^e Genesis one. ‘Tis
wrong o’ Sir Roger to deny us poor
volk the use of ’em...”

My companion, evidently my
host’s father, continued grumbling
before relapsing into silence. He
was a man of mature years, with
the gnarled brown hands and
deeply creased brown neck of a

lifelong outdoor worker. He wore
the knee breeches and full -skirted
coat of the eighteenth century, but
these were of coarse, self-colored
homespun, patched and darned.
His calves were clad in a pair of
baggy, soiled cotton stockings, and
his big, shapeless shoes did not
differ as to right and left.

On his head rode a large,
full-bottomed, mouse-colored wig,
which hung to his shoulders but
from which half the hair had fallen
out. On top of the wig was a
stained, battered, wide-brimmed
felt hat, turned up in back but
otherwise allowed to droop in
scallops.

Besides the wig, he also
flaunted a full if straggly gray
beard. I had thought that all men
in this era were shaven.

I wondered if my friend was
imprisoned in the body of the
father, as I was in that of the son. If
so, the beard was a good joke on
him. As a devotee of the eighteenth
century, my friend detested all hair
on the face. He had long nagged me
about my harmless little mustache.
If indeed my friend was there,
though, there was no way for me to
communicate with him.

Then I thought: was I, too,
wearing a wig? I could not tell. It
would be an equally good joke on
me, who despised wigs.

The pair subsided into silence,
save for an occasional muttered

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

149

remark. They were not great
talkers. I could follow the thoughts
of the son, but these did little to
orient me. The jumble of names,
faces, and scenes flickered past me
too quickly to analyze.

I did learn that my host’s name
was William, that his father was a
yeoman farmer, and that they were
the only surviving members of their
family. I also learned that the
father had a feud with the local
squire and that they were on their
way to a fair. From an allusion to
Bristol, I gathered that we were
somewhere in the Southwest of
England. From the look of the
vegetation, I surmised that it was
springtime.

The open fields and woodlots
gave way to a straggle of small
houses, and these thickened into a
village. From the height of the dim,
ruddy orb that passed for sun in
England, I judged that the time
was about midday.

On the edge of the village
roared the fair. There were swarms
of rustics, clad more or less like my
father (for so I had come to think of
him). There were a few ladies and
gentlemen in more photogenic
eighteenth-century attire, with high
heels and powdered wigs. Some
younger men, I noted, wore their
own hair in pigtails instead of wigs.
My father’s beard, however, was
the only one in sight.

When we got into the crowd,
the stink of unwashed humankind
was overpowering. Although I, who
smelled with William’s olfactory
nerves, found it horrible, he
seemed not to notice. I suppose he
was pretty ripe himself. From the
itches in various parts of his body, I
suspected that he harbored a whole
fauna of parasites.

Two teams were playing cricket.
Beyond, young men were running
and jumping in competition. There
was a primitive merry-go-round,
powered by an old horse. A boy
followed the beast round and
round, beating it to keep it moving.
There were edibles and drinkables
for sale; of the fairgoers, some were
already drunk.

There were games of chance
and skill: throwing balls and quoits
at targets, guessing which walnut
shell the pea was under, cards, dice,
and a wheel of fortune. A row of
tents housed human freaks and a
large one, a camel. A cockfight and
a puppet show, striving to outshout
each other, were going on at the
further end of the grounds.

My father would not let me
squander of few pence on these
diversions, but he paid tuppence
for us to see the camel. This
mangy-looking beast loftily chewed
its cud while a man in an “Arab
costume” made of old sheeting
lectured on the camel’s qualities.
Most of what he said was wrong.

150

“Hola therel” cried a voice. I —
or rather the William whose body I
shared — turned. One of the
gentlemen was addressing us — a
well -set-up man of middle years,
with a lady on his arm.

“Stap me vitals,” said this man,
“If it beant old Phil!”

My father and I took off our
hats and bowed. My father said,
“God give you good day, Mayster
Bradford! Good day, your la’ship!
Tis an unexpected pleasure.”

Bradford came up and shook
my father’s hand. “Tis good for
the optics to see you again, Philip.
You, too. Will. Zookers, but ye’ve
grown!”

“Aye, he’s a good lad,” said
Philip. “The Earth hath zwallowed
all my hopes but un.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord
taketh away. Tell me, Phil, how
goes it betwixt you and Sir Roger?”

“HI enough,” said my father.
“E’er since the enclosure, he hath
been at me to sell out me poor little
patch to add to his grand acres.”

“Why don’t ye sell?” said
Bradford. “I hear he hath offered a
good price.”

“Nay, zir, with all due respect,
that I won’t. Shirlaws ha’ been
there zince memory runneth not to
the contrary, and I’ll not be the
virst to gi’ it up. And if I did,
’twould not be to a titled villain who
rides his vox hunt across me crops.
Qean ruined last year’s barley.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“Same stubborn old Phil!
Roger Stanwyck’s not so bad a cully
if ye get on’s good side. For all’s
glouting humors, he doth good
works of charity.” Bradford
lowered his voice. “Harkee, Phil,
we’re old friends, and ne’er mind
the distinctions o’ rank. Sell out to
Sir Roger for the best price ye can
get, but quit this contention.
Otherwise, I shan’t be able to
answer for your well-being. V^rbum
sat sapienti."

“What mean ye, zir?”

“In’s cups, which is oft enough,
he boasts that he’ll have your land
or have you dancing on the nubbing
cheat ere the twelve-month be out.”

“Aye, zir?” said Philip.

“Aye verily, no question. I was
there, at a party at Colonel
Armitage’s. Roger’s the magistrate
and can do’t.”

“He must needs ge’ me dited
and convicted virst.”

“P fackins, man, talk sense!
With all the hanging offenses on
the books, they can string you up
for auft more heinous than spitting
on the floor.”

“Fie! Juries won’t convict in
such cases.”

“If they happen to like you. I
needn’t tell you ye be not the most
popular man hereabouts.”

“Aye, Mayster Bradford, but
wherefore? I lead a good Christian
life.”

“Imprimus, ye foft against the

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

151

enclosure.”

“Sartainly I did. ‘Tis the doom
o’ the independent farmer.”

“Me good Philip, the day of the
old English yeoman is past. The
country needs corn, and the only
way to get it is to carve up all these
wasteful commons and put ’em to
grain crops. Secundus, ye are a
Methodist, and to these folk that’s
worse nor a Papist or a Jew. They’d
be tickled to see a wicked heretic
swing, specially since we haven’t
had a hanging in o’er a year.”

“I believe what the Almighty
and the Good Book tell me.”

“Tertius, ye wear that damned
beard.”

“I do but obey the divine
commands, zir. Zee Leviticus
nineteen.”

“And quartus, ye are learned
beyond your station. I don’t mind;

I like to see the lower orders
better themselves — within reason,
o’ course. But the villagers think ye
give yourself airs and hate you
for’t.”

“I only strive to obey God the
more wisely by me little laming.
Zee Proverbs one, vifth verse. As
for zelling out to Zir Roger, I’ll
come to the parish virst.”

Bradford sighed and threw up
his hands. “Well, say not that I
failed to warn you. But, hark, if ye
do sell, ye shall have a good place
with me for the asking. ‘Twon’t be
arra clodhopping chore, neither.

but a responsible post with good
pay. Ask me sarvents if I beant a
good master.”

“Well, thankee, zir, but — ”

“Think it o’er,’’ Bradford
clapped Philip on the shoulder and
went away with his wife.

We strolled about, bought a
snack of bread and cheese, and
watched the contests. William
would have liked to spend money
on the freak shows and the
gambling games, but Philip sternly
forbade. Then a shout brought us
about.

“Hey, Shirlaw! Philip Shirlaw!”

We were addressed by a stout,
red-faced man with a strip of gold
lace on his three-cornered hat. He
came swiftly towards us, poling
himself along with a four-foot,
gold-headed walking stick. With
him was a gorgeously dressed
young man, tall and slender. The
young man carried his hat beneath
his arm, because it could never
have been fitted over his wig. This
wig, besides the curls at the sides
and the queue at the back, shot up
in a foot-high pompadour in front.

The youth was as pale as the
older one was ruddy and had black
beauty spots glued to cheek and
jaw. He languidly waved a pale
slender hand as he spoke.

“I’ll have a word with thee,
sarrah,” said the red-faced one.

“Aye, your honor?” replied
Philip.

152

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“Not here, not here. Come to
my house this afternoon — after
dinner-time will do.”

“Fatherl” said the youth. “You
forget, Mr. Harcourt and’s wife are
dining with us.” I noted that the
young man dropped his final r’s,
like a modem Englishman, where-
as the others with whom we had
spoken did not.

“So he doth, so he doth,”
grumbled Sir Roger Stanwyck.
“Make it within the hour, Shirlaw.
We’re about to depart the fair, so
tarry not!”

It was a long walk back from
the fair to Sir Roger’s mansion, but
the squire would never have
thought to offer us a lift in his
coach.

Stanwyck House so swarmed
with servants that it was a wonder
they did not fall over one another.
One of them ushered us into Sir
Roger’s study. I had little chance to
observe the surroundings, save as
William’s vision happened to light
on things; and he had been here
before. There was, for instance, a
pair of swords crossed behind a
shield on the wall — but all made
of glass, not steel.

Sir Roger, wineglass in hand,
glowered at us from a big wing
chair, then put on a forced smile.
His son, seated at a harpsichord
and playing something by Handel,
left off his strumming.

“Now, Shirlaw!” barked Sir
Roger. “I have argued with thee
and pleaded with thee, to no avail.
Art a stubborn old fart; s’bud. I’ll
give thee credit. To show me heart’s
in the right place. I’ll raise me last
offer to a hundred guineas even.
Tis thrice what thy lousy patch is
worth and will set thee up for life.
But that’s all; not a brass farden
more. What say ye? What say ye?”

“Zorry, zir,” said Philip. “I ha’
gi’en you mind answer, and that’s
that. Me land stays mine.”

They argued some more, while
the son patted yawns. Sir Roger got
redder and redder. At last he
jumped up, roaring:

“All right, get out, thou
Hanoverian son of a bitch! I’ll
Methodist thee! If one method
won’t sarve, there’s a mort more in
me locker. Get out!”

“Your honor may kiss mind
arse,” said Philip as he turned
away.

Behind us. Sir Roger hurled his
wineglass at us but missed. The
glass shattered, and Sir Roger
screamed: “John! Abraham!

Throw me these rascals out! Fetch
me sword, somebody! I’ll qualify
them to run for the geldings’ plate!
Charles, ye mincing milksop, why
don’t ye drub me these runagates?”

“La, Father, you know that I
— ” began the young man. The rest
was lost in the distance as Philip
and William walked briskly out.

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

153

before the hired help could
organize a posse. Behind us, the
clock struck four.

I was myself filled with race,
both from what I got from
William’s mind and on my own
account. If I had been in charge of
William’s body, I might have tried
something foolish. It is just as well
that I was not. In those days, a
peasant simply did not punch a
knight or baronet (whichever Sir
Roger was) in the nose, no matter
what the provocation.

We left the grounds by another
path, which led across a spacious
lawn. At the edge of this lawn, the
ground dropped sharply. There was
a retaining wall, where the surface
descended almost vertically for six
or eight feet into a shallow ditch.
From this depression, the earth
slopped gently up on the other side,
almost to the level on the inner
lawn. This structure, like a
miniature fortification, was called a
ha-ha. Its purpose was to afford
those in the house a distant,
unobstructed grassy vista and at
the same time keep the deer and
other wild life away from the inner
lawns and flower beds.

We descended a flight of steps,
which cut through the ha-ha, and
continued along a winding path.
This path led over a brook and
through a wood. On the edge of the
brook, workmen were building a
tea house in Chinese style, with red

and black paint and gilding. As we
followed the winding path through
the wood, a rabbit hopped away.

“Hm,” said Philip Shirlaw.
“That o’erweening blackguard...
And us wi’ noft but bread and
turnips in the house. Harkee, Will,
Zir Roger dines at vive, doth he
not?’’

“Aye,” said William. “Twas
vour, but that craichy zon o’ his
hath broft the new vashion vrom
London.”

“Well, now,” said Philip,
“Meseems that God hath put us in
the way of a bit o’ flesh to spice out
regiment. Wi’ guests at Stanwyck
House, the Stanwycks ’ll be close to
home from vive to nigh unto
midnight. Those ungodly gluttons
dawdle vive or zix hours o’er their
meat, and the pack o’ zarvents’ll be
clustered round to uphold Zir
Roger’s hospitality. By the time
they’re throf, Zir Roger’ll be too
drunk to know what betides.”

“Dost plan to nab one o’ his
honor’s coneys?”

“Aye, thof it an’t Zir Roger’s
but God’s.”

“Oh, Vayther, have a care!
Remember Mayster Bradford’s
warning — ”

“The Almighty will take care of
us.”

Another half hour brought us to
our own farm and house. The
house was little more than a shack.

154

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

not much above the level of the
houses of comic-strip hillbillies.
Furnishings were minimal, save
that a shelf along one wall bore a
surprising lot of books. This must
be what Bradford had meant when
he spoke of Philip Shirlaw’s being
learned above his station.

Since William did not fix his
eyes on this shelf for more than a
few seconds at a time, I could not
tell much about Philip’s choice of
books. I caught a glimpse of several
volumes of sermons by John Wesley
and George Whitefield. There were
also, I think, a Bible, a
Shakespeare, and a Plutarch.

Philip Shirlaw climbed up into
the loft and came down with a pair
of small crossbows. I was astonish-
ed, supposing these medieval
weapons to have been long
obsolete. I later learned that they
were used for poaching as late as
the time of our adventure, being
favored for their silence.

William unhappily tried again
to dissuade his sire: “Don’t let thy
grudge against Zir Roger lead thee
into risking out necks. Colonel
Armitage’s vootman. Jemmy
Thome, hath told me ‘tis a hanging
offense to ‘trespass with intent to
kill rabbits.’ Them are the words o’
the statute.’’

I followed the argument with
growing apprehension. What
would happen to me if William
were killed while I shared his body?

But Philip Shirlaw was not to be
swayed. “Poohl Put thy trust in
Providence, zon, and vear noft. Nor
di I, as a good Christian, bear Zir
Roger a grudge. I do but take my
vair share o’ the vruits o’ the earth,
which God hath provided for all
mankind. Zee the ninth chapter o’
Genesis.’’

The steel crossbow bolts were
about the size of a modern pencil.
With a pocket full of these and a
crossbow under his arm, William
set out behind his father.

They scouted the woods be-
tween the Stanwyck estate and the
Shirlaw farm, seeing and hearing
no one. The sun sank lower and
disappeared behind the clouds,
which thickened with a promise of
rain.

As Philip had surmised, all the
service personnel of Stanwyck
House had gone to the mansion to
wait upon the master and his
guests.

At last — it must have been
nearly six — we roused a rabbit,
which went hippety-hoppity
through the big old oaks. William
made a quick motion, but Philip
stayed him with a gesture.
Carefully, they cocked their wea-
pons, placed their bolts in the
grooves, and scouted forward.

They raised the rabbit again,
but again it bolted. Being old
hands at this, they spread out and
continued their stalk.

BALSAMO’S MIRROR

155

The woods thinned, and they
reached the edge of the outer
lawns, not far from the ha-ha. In
the depression that ran along the
foot of the ha-ha sat their rabbit,
nibbling.

Philip’s crossbow twenged. The
quarrel whined. The rabbit tum-
bled over.

“Got uni” said William.

The Shirlaws ran out from the
woods to seize the game, when a
bellow halted them. Atop the ha-ha
stood Sir Roger Stanwyck and his
son Charles. Sir Roger held a
musket trained upon them; Char-
les, a pistol.

“Ha!” roared Sir Roger. “Said
I not I’d have you? The divil set
upon me if I don’t see you twain
dangling from the hempseed
caudle!”

“O Gemini, they mean it!” mut-
tered William. “Get ready to
vlee!”

“Drop those crossbows!” came
the high voice of Charles Stanwyck.

William’s bow was still cocked
and loaded. Without thinking, the
young man whipped up the weapon
and discharged it at Sir Roger. He
missed, and the whistle of the bolt
was drowned by the roar of the
musket. I heard the ball strike
Philip, who fell backwards with a
piercing scream. William dropped
his crossbow and ran for the woods.

Another flash, lit up the evening
landscape. The report came to

William’s ears just as a terrific blow
struck him in the back...

And then I was back in
Madame Nosi’s room, on my feet
but staggering back from the wall.
About the floor lay the shattered
remains of Balsamo’s mirror. To
my left lay my friend. Madame
Nosi was not to be seen, but I had a
dim memory of shrieks and crashes
just before my “awakening.”

I dashed to the head of the
stair. At the foot, in an unlovely
sprawl, lay Madame Nosi.

After a second’s hesitation, I
went back to the room. My friend
was sitting up on the floor,
mumbling: “What — what hath
happened? I thought I was shot...”

“Come, help me!” I said. We
descended to Madame Nosi.

“Pull her up,” said my friend.
“It’s not decent for her to be lying
upside down like that.”

“Don’t touch her!” I said.
“Shouldn’t move an injured person
until the doctor comes.” I felt for
her pulse but found none.

A policeman appeared, follow-
ed by a couple of neighbors. The
cop asked, “What goes on? What’s
the screaming and crashing — oh!”
He sighted Fatima Nosi.

In due course, the ambulance
came and took Madame Nosi. For
the next few days, my friend and I
spent hours answering questions by
the coroner and other officials.

156

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

SF WRITER'S SERVICE

Anne W. Deraps, long familiar with
the genre of science fiction, and now,
as well as working in that field, a
member of the Writing-Advisory
Group at The University of Hartford,
is offering a writer's service. For
$10.00 for a manuscript up to 10,000
words and $1 .00 per thousand words
thereafter, I will read your manu-
script, analyze it, give constructive
criticism, suggest the names of books
to read which will help you to improve
your writing, etc. Checks should be
made payable to and manuscripts
mailed to: Anne W. Deraps Box 24,
Warren, Conn. 06754.

As nearly as we could recon-
struct the events, my friend and I
had leaped out of our chairs at the
moment when, in our eighteenth-
century lives, we were shot by the
Stanwycks. 1 had blundered into
the wall and broken the mirror.
Whether in sudden panic at the
success of her spell, or for some
other reason, Madame Nosi had
run out of the room. She had died,
not from the effects of the fall, as
we at first supposed, but from heart
failure before she fell. Her
physician testified that she had
suffered from heart disease.

The officials, although puzzled
and suspicious, let us go. They
swept up the fragments of
Balsamo’s mirror for “evidence,”
but I could never find out what
became of the pieces. I had some

vague idea of putting them together
but let it go in the rush of
cramming for spring finals. I
suppose the pieces were thrown out
with the trash.

When it was over, my friend
sighed and said, “I fear me that the
eighteenth century, which I have
idealized all these years, never
really existed. The real one was far
dirtier, more narrow-minded, bru-
tal, orthodox, and superstitious,
than I could have ever conceived
without seeing it. Gawd, to be
cooped up in the body of a
bewhiskered amateur theologian
and not be able to say a word to
controvert his fallacies! The eight-
eenth century I visualized was a
mere artifact — a product of my
imagination, compounded of pic-
tures in books which I saw as a
child, things I had read, and bits of
Colonial architecture I’ve seen.”

“Then,” I asked, “you’ll settle
down and be reconciled to your own
twentieth century?”

“Good heavens, no! Our
experience — assuming it to be
genuine and not a mere hallucina-
tion — only serves to convince me
that the real world, anywhere or in
any age, is no place for a gentleman
of sensitivity. So I shall spend more
time in the world of dreams. If you
like, Willy, I shall be glad to meet
you there. There’s a palace of lapis
lazuli I must show you, atop a
mountain of glass...”

MARKET PLACE

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INDEX TO VOLUME 50, JANUARY-JUNE 1976

Aickman, Robert: The Hospice {novcXcX)

Asimov, Isaac: Science

125

Silent Victory

Change of Air

Feb.

134

The Nightfall Effect

.March

144

All Gall

115

It’s A Wonderful Town

Surprise! Surprise!

132

130

Friday the Thirteenth

Ayme, Marcel: Dermuche

Barkin, Haskell: Time Is Money .

149

Bishop, Michael: The Samurai and the

Willows (novelet)

Feb.

Boles, Paul Darcy: The Sunday We

Didn ‘t .Go to Lemons May 5

Budrys, Algis: Books Jan.-March

May-June

Chapin, Paul: Vo/ca/io Feb. 145

Coney, Michael G.: Those Good Old

Days of Liquid Fuel Jan. 63

Cowper, Richard: Piper At The Gates of

DawTi (novella) March 4

Paradise Beach (novelet) May 144

Dalzell, Bonnie: Pages From A 22nd
Century Zoologist's Notebook: Part 2

May 118

Davidson, Avram: The Account of Mr.

Ira Davidson May 98

De Camp, L. Sprague: The Search for

Superman {novelet) Feb. 112

Balsamo's Mirror June 143

Dorman, Sonya: Them And Us And All

April 67

Dybek, Stuart; horror Afov/e Jan. 45

Eklund, Gordon: Changing Styles

March 66

Foster, Alan Dean: //e June 47

Gironel, Bertrand: An Extrusion of

Lions (verse) March 154

Goulart, Ron: At The Starvation Ball

April 88

Grant, CL.:/1 Crowd of Shadows.. ..]\xne 68

Jeppson, J. O.: Positively The Last Pact
With The Devil? March 52

Malzberg, Barry N.: Seeking Assistance

April 109

Rage Pain. Alienation And Other
Aspects Of The Writing of Science

F/ctiort (article) April 103

Novitski, Vdi\x\: Acrostic Puzzle Feb. 158

Acrostic Puzzle June 157

Owen, Guy: The Face On The

Tombstone Feb. 125

Parker, Jeanne: Sweets To The Sweet

April 79

Pohl, Frederik: Man Plus (novel)

Parti April 4

Part 2 May 33

Part 3 June 81

Reaves, J. Michael: The Sound Of

Something Dying May 120

Reed, Kit: The Attack Of The Giant

Baby Jan. 83

Roberts, Mary-Carter: Ride, Colonel,

Ride! March 129

Runyon, Charles W.: Brain Diver

March 110

Russ, Joanna : My Boat Jan. 6

Searles, Baird: Films

An Edgar Rice Pudding Jan. 61

Space: 1949 Feb. 62

Space: 1949 {Con't) March 126

Midwinter Mishmosh April 85

Mishmosh Redux June 65

Sohl.icTry: The Service Feb. 105

Tall, Stephen: Chlorophyll (novelet)

June 4

Tritten, Larry: Fma/ Cut March 155

Waldo, Thayer: A Stillness At Sordera

(novelet) March 82

Williamson, Jack: The Machines That

Ate TooMuch (novelet) Feb. 65

Wilson, Gahan: Cartoons Jan. -June

Books April

Wolf, Gary: Doctor Rivet and Supercon

5a/ (novella) Jan. 101

Young, Robert F.: June 26

159

160

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

1 AA

3 F

12 H

13 A

14 Z

15 J

24 R

25 I

26 M

27 Y

35 K

36 0

37 E

38 a|

■

47 T

48 Y

49 N

57 A

58 K

59 t

68 U

69 F

70 K

79 Y

80 X

81 L

5 C6 A7 J8 N9 Tl

110 O 11 B

16 0 17 P 18 Q

1 20 H 21 N

28 D 29 Q 30 Ll

32 S 33 U

39M40 R41 X42 F43 B44 P

150 G 51 B 52 A 53 BB 54 M

22 £23 U

46 Z 46 G

60 V 61 L 62 R|

L 82 G

fS Y 64 V65 R66 H67 Z

72 B73 J74W75 X

Q90 N91 V92 Wl

110 J 111 X

|S3 C 94 F

101 I 102 E 103 M 104 B 105 K

112 Z^ H 114 D

120 R 121 BB|

A 123 Z 124 T

95 R 96 W

97 Z 98 L 99 Y

1108 V 109 J|

125 D 126 Ui

1117 V 118 F 119 Y

127 BB 128 Q 129 R

136 U 137 Q 138 BB

141 L 142 B 1« R 145 N 146 Z 147 Pl

139 AA 140 G|

149 J 150 X|

151 W 152 K 153 N 154 Y 155 £156 Z

riW T 164 I 165 X

174 0 175 G 176 J 177 S 178 AA

186 V 187 Z

188 G 189 M

157 H

158 A

159 BB

160 F

■

161 W

162 S

167 A

168 W

169 T

170 M

171 Z

172 Y

173 N

179 W

180 P

181 V

182 Q

183 £

184 M

185 1

190 B

191 S

■

132 U

193 K

194 T

195 F

ACROSTIC PUZZLE by Paul Novitski

This puzzle contains a quotation from o work of science fiction. First, guess as mony of the
clues as you can ond write the word or words In the numbered blanks in the puzzle. (The end
of a line in the diagram doesn't mean the end of a word.) If you have answered the clues
correctly, you will see words forming in the puzzle blocks. Fill In the missing letters ond put
them In the numbered spaces opposite the clues. That will help you guess those words and
f"®''®^ore get more of the puzzle, and so on. The first letters of the correctly answered clues
will spell out the name of the author and the title of the work from which the quototion is
taken.

A. Far-sighted.

122

167

158

B. Inventor of on amplifier
of muscular energy.

C. Aussie SF novel by

“l32

104

“w

~51

Keith Smith

“isT

~93

D. She was a bandit with one

good arm, out to rob his soul.
(Ellison)

143

125

114

E. Further from the source of

a gravitational field.

155

102

"183

F. Mean mercenaries

(Herbert).

160

118

195

130

G. Mildred Broxon.

188

175

140

H. Catalog, of permutations

of event.

157

113

1. Telephone booth for
chats with God.

lis

101

”164

J. Universol constant.

110

149

176

109

K. Real progress.

~35

193

~?52

105

”37

~58

L. As clear as mud, it's Greek

to me — you'd better ask
Piers Anthony.

141

“98

~30

M. An apt description of

obscure clues like this.

170

184

116

103

”39

l48 '

l89 '

N. Author: "Of Mist, and

Grass, and Sand."

173

~87

145

I53

“27

”49 '

O. It locks dimension.

100

134

174

P. You should be familiar

with Delany by now.

147

lio

Q. A choice example of free
will.

137

182

128

R. Michael Moorcock's

surfboard.

120

~M4 '

129 '

“24 '

“65 '

“40 ‘

“95

161

162

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

S. Precipice (U.S. Midlands
Colloq.).

177

“i?r

~32

162

li5

T. Author: “The Eternal

Moment."

U. SP owards are a cloudy
issue.

194

169

163

106

124

192

108

181

117

186

W. A non-equiloteral, oblique-
angled parallelogram.

168

161

179

151

107

X. She could only fly at night
(Silverberg).

150

165

Y. Some welfare recipients
would refute this claim.
(Heinlein).

154

172

119

166

Z. This vast distance turns
titanic suns to pinpricks.

112

187

171

135

146

156

AA. Two-dimensiono! visual
art medium, first and
second millenia A.D.

Ttb

139

B6. He rules entire oceans
from 2,700,500,000 mitos

159

138

121

127

away.

Answer will appear in the July issue.

COMING NEXT MONTH

Next month’s feature is a new novella by Gregory
Benford and Gordon Eklund, a sequel to their award-
winning “If the Stars Are Gods.” The title of the new
story is THE ANVIL OF JOVE, and it is a suspenseful
tale about an exploration team on an artificial satellite
orbiting Jupiter and their effort to understand a puzzle
that is almost certainly an alien message.

The July issue is on sale June 1.

123

WILL YOU BE
^ PRESENT
^ AT THE
I FUTURE?

June 25th -29th

Here’s your chance to attend the
greatest science fiction event ever!

Gaze upon what’s in your future if you act now . . .

• For five full days you’ll visit science fiction/fact exhibits, programs,
writing and art workshops, displays by SF publishers and a fantastic
around-the-clock film festival of over 100 classic feature-iength Science
Fiction & Fantasy films of the past 70 years.

• You’ll meet over 50 of the best-known SF authors and editors who’ll join
you for readings, discussions and rap sessions.

• You won’t want to miss the SF Memorabilia Room, an Arts and Crafts
Show, Dealers’ Rooms featuring books, fiim materials, art and collectables.
Authors’ Autograph Booths and much more!

• SF EXPO '76 will occupy two entire convention fioors of The New York
Hiiton. Your registration will entitle you to all that SF EXPO ’76 has to offer
for this five day extravaganza. You’li be abie to come and go as you pldase.
Registration is $18.50 -|- $1.48 (8% NYC sales tax). SF EXPO ’76 has also
arranged for domestic and overseas charter flights hosted by SF authors.
Don’t let the future pass you by. Registration is limited, so act NOW!

You’ll save $7.02 Off the door admission price.

Write for details, guest list and film guide, or better yet . . .

Make a check or M.O. payable to: Science Fiction Services Inc.,

Dept. 23, Box 862, Montclair, New Jersey 07042.

You’ll receive additional SF EXPO ’76 program information with your
registration.

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